Innovate Issue 2 November 2020 | Page 39

WELLBEING
Performance
Productivity
Wellbeing
Motivation
Gender
Male
0.81
0.71
0.73
0.74
Female
0.82
0.73
0.77
0.77
Nationality
Non-British
0.81
0.72
0.71
0.78
British
0.82
0.73
0.76
0.75
Year Group
Lower School
0.87
0.80
0.84
0.81
Middle School
0.80
0.73
0.74
0.74
Upper School
0.77
0.66
0.69
0.72
Ethnicity
White
0.82
0.72
0.75
0.76
Black / Black British
0.89
0.74
0.82
0.91
Asian / Asian British
0.76
0.73
0.68
0.71
Mixed
0.83
0.75
0.78
0.79
Table 1 : Pearson correlation coefficients quantifying the association between student performance , productivity , wellbeing and motivation and teachers ’ inclusive leadership score , stratified by gender , nationality , year group and ethnicity . Values are based on the dataset with outliers removed ( n = 677 ) and all values are statistically significant ( p < 0.01 ).
Overall student performance and its three components were also analysed to assess any differences between students ’ self-ratings by demographic variable . Given that all four variables are not normally-distributed , nonparametric hypothesis tests were run to investigate the differences in mean ranks between the groups . Applying the Mann-Whitney U test showed that male students self-reported higher levels of productivity , wellbeing and motivation compared to female students ; at a component level , this difference was only statistically significant for wellbeing ( p = 0.003 ), but when all three components were taken together , male students selfreported significantly higher scores ( p = 0.023 ). No significant differences were found between British and non-British students .
Applying the Kruskal-Wallis test revealed that although student sensitivity to teachers ’ inclusive leadership behaviours reduces as they progress through the school , this reduction was not significantly different in terms of overall student performance or its three components between lower , middle and upper school students , nor students of different ethnicities . Furthermore , a linear regression analysis showed that female students were consistently more sensitive to teachers ’ leadership behaviours throughout the School and this was found to be the case for productivity , wellbeing and motivation . Overall , around 65 % of the variation in student performance was explained by differences in the behaviours and attitudes of students ’ mathematics teachers .
Conclusions
The 15 components of inclusive leadership ( individualised consideration , idealised influence , inspirational motivation , intellectual stimulation , unqualified acceptance , empathy , listening , persuasion , confidence building , growth , foresight , conceptualisation , awareness , stewardship and healing ) have been shown in industry and HEIs to strongly influence employee and student performance , respectively . In this study , a similarly strong , statistically-significant positive association ( r = 0.81 ) was found between mathematics teachers displaying these inclusive behaviours and student performance in mathematics , and these correlations did not differ between male and female students , nor between students of different nationalities . However , the strength of these correlations was found to significantly decrease as students progressed through the school , indicating increased self-motivation and independence as students mature ( e . g . r = 0.87 for lower school students versus r = 0.77 for upper school students ; p = 0.008 ). Analysis of student responses to the 34 questions evaluating teachers ’ inclusive leadership behaviours reveals that the Mathematics Department is strong at allowing students to display authentic behaviours , serving the broad needs of students and operating on the basis of fairness , while areas of potential development include further encouraging students to express their concerns , creating an environment for minority voices to be heard and implementing further strategies to improve student
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