Running head: TEN STRATEGIC POINTS 1 TEN STRATEGIC POINTS 8 Ten Strategic Points Ten Strategic Points for a Quantitative Correlational Study 1. Topic- Topic plays a critical role in offering a wide research issue in the area of: Influence of Transformational Leadership on Student Performance and Engagement. 2. Literature review - Lists primary points for four sections in the Literature Review: a. Background of the problem/gap; b. Theoretical foundations (models and theories to be foundation for study); c. Review of literature topics with key theme for each one; d. Summary a. Background of the Problem: Comment by Mohamed Ali: Please don’t describe List first gap sources like Gap Vidyarthi et al. (2014) found that the EI of leaders demonstrated a significant, positive correlation with the job performance of their employees, and suggested continued research to explore the relationship between leaders’ emotional perceptions and their employees’ attitudes – specifically job satisfaction Cancio et al. (2013) recommended that future studies look at the relationship between administrator support and teacher job satisfaction outside of a professional support organization Bacground Theories or models i. Student engagement and performance are some of the leading problems that affect educators and institutional leaders. Numerous studies indicate that students should develop a sense of belonging for them to participate and improve their performance in school. However, there is still a dearth in knowledge on how transformational leadership can be leveraged to enhance student engagement and performance. II. Many studies on student engagement only regard it as an indicator of academic attainment. These concepts are often premised on the idea that students who are disengaged or disaffected perform poorly. Nonetheless, low achievements can also cause students to withdraw from school. III. There are many conditions that have been proposed as prerequisites for improved academic achievement. These often range from provision of learning resources to development of conducive learning climate. IV. However, there is a paucity of knowledge on the impacts that leadership has on promoting learning behaviors in schools. In particular, not many studies have been conducted to investigate the effects of transformational leadership on academic achievement. b. Theoretical foundations (models and theories to be foundation for study); Comment by Mohamed Ali: Cite sources i. The transformational leadership theory will; inform the theoretical foundations of this study. The theory postulates that leaders posses behaviors that improve their followers’ level of motivation and innovative thinking. In so doing, the followers can effectively improve organizational innovation, individual performance, and organizational performance. ii. Unlike the transactional leadership model, the transformational leadership theory seeks to nurture a sense of idealism and .

1. Running head: TEN STRATEGIC POINTS 1
TEN STRATEGIC POINTS 8
Ten Strategic Points
Ten Strategic Points for a Quantitative Correlational Study
1. Topic- Topic plays a critical role in offering a wide research
issue in the area of: Influence of Transformational Leadership
on Student Performance and Engagement.
2. Literature review - Lists primary points for four sections in
the Literature Review: a. Background of the problem/gap; b.
Theoretical foundations (models and theories to be foundation
for study); c. Review of literature topics with key theme for
each one; d. Summary
a. Background of the Problem: Comment by Mohamed Ali:
Please don’t describe
List first gap sources like
Gap
Vidyarthi et al. (2014) found that the EI of leaders demonstrated
a significant, positive correlation with the job performance of
their employees, and suggested continued research to explore
the relationship between leaders’ emotional perceptions and
their employees’ attitudes – specifically job satisfaction
Cancio et al. (2013) recommended that future studies look at the

2. relationship between administrator support and teacher job
satisfaction outside of a professional support organization
Bacground
Theories or models
i. Student engagement and performance are some of the leading
problems that affect educators and institutional leaders.
Numerous studies indicate that students should develop a sense
of belonging for them to participate and improve their
performance in school. However, there is still a dearth in
knowledge on how transformational leadership can be leveraged
to enhance student engagement and performance.
II. Many studies on student engagement only regard it as an
indicator of academic attainment. These concepts are often
premised on the idea that students who are disengaged or
disaffected perform poorly. Nonetheless, low achievements can
also cause students to withdraw from school.
III. There are many conditions that have been proposed as
prerequisites for improved academic achievement. These often
range from provision of learning resources to development of
conducive learning climate.
IV. However, there is a paucity of knowledge on the impacts
that leadership has on promoting learning behaviors in schools.
In particular, not many studies have been conducted to
investigate the effects of transformational leadership on
academic achievement.
b. Theoretical foundations (models and theories to be
foundation for study); Comment by Mohamed Ali: Cite
sources
i. The transformational leadership theory will; inform the
theoretical foundations of this study. The theory postulates that
leaders posses behaviors that improve their followers’ level of
motivation and innovative thinking. In so doing, the followers
can effectively improve organizational innovation, individual
performance, and organizational performance.
ii. Unlike the transactional leadership model, the

3. transformational leadership theory seeks to nurture a sense of
idealism and ethical standards of the subordinates by pursuing
higher targets. This model was proposed by Burns on the basis
of the evaluations of personal traits of a large number of
political leaders.
iii. The transformational leadership theory encourages
subordinates to focus their attention on long-term goals, exert
their innovative capabilities, and emphasize on the changes and
adjustments of the entire organizational system. In so doing,
leaders can establish amicable climates for meeting their goals.
c. Review of literature topics with key theme for each one;
i. Need for Leadership to Improve Performance: In the last five
years, there has been a widespread public outcry from American
parents, teachers and policymakers over the gradual decline in
the performance of American schools compared to other
developed countries. According to Norton et al. (2012)
transformational leadership is urgently needed to reverse this
alarming decline in academic achievement.
ii. Teachers’ self-efficacy and Student Performance- According
toGkolia, Koutelios and Belias (2018), school principals who
employ transformational leadership styles improve teachers’
self-efficacy levels, thus elevating the level of performance of
students. Using Teachers’ Sense of Self-Efficacy Test (TSES)
they found the existence of a stability of the impacts of
transformational leadership and self-efficacy within a
centralized educational system, as well as the significance of
the application of different transformational leadership
behaviors relating to the enhancement of teachers’ self-efficacy.
iii. Integrated Transformational Leadership and School
Performance- Boerberg (2016) argues that schools that refine
transformational leadership behaviors to incorporate
instructional management can effectively improve the leaders’
impacts on achievements. In addition, Boerberg (2016)
highlights the importance of teacher-student relationships in
school improvements, for example, students’ performance and
achievement on math is highly affected by emotional

4. engagement.
iv. Academic achievement- In an effort to explore the effects of
transformational leadership on student academic achievement,
Chen (2014) utilized leadership practices Inventory to measure
leadership practices of 154 middle and high school principals in
California. The outcomes of the study showed that
Transformational Leadership has no major effect on student
academic attainment.
v. Methodology- The main research design that will be
employed for this study is correlational design. This is because
the study attempts to measure the degree of relationship
between transformational leadership and student performance
and engagement. Correlational design is ideal for this study
since it seeks to investigate the association between two or
more variables. This will be attained by understanding and
assessing the statistical relationships between them with no
influences from any extraneous variable.
d. Synthesis/Summary
a. Background: There is need to close the existent literature
gaps on relationship between transformational leadership and
student performance in schools.
b. Gap/Problem: There is a paucity of research that investigate
how transformational leadership can be used to improve student
performance.
c. Final thoughts
3. Problem statement - Explain the phenomena to study
(qualitative) or variables/groups (quantitative) to study, in one
sentence: In the last ten years, American schools have been
recording poor performance compared to other developed
countries. According to a survey conducted by Pew Research
Center (2015), mathematics and science evaluation results
indicate that American citizens continue to rank average and
behind other advanced industrialized nations. While the United
States has some of the most advanced learning infrastructures,
resources and technologies for supporting educational activities,
students still continue to register average performance.

5. Consequently, there is a growing group of scholars who have
decided to investigate school leadership as a necessary
ingredient in improving performance. In this respect, leadership
influences on school performance is still a green field. In
particular, there is still a scarcity of literature that attempt to
investigate the impacts of transformational leadership models
on student performance. Comment by Mohamed Ali: No
From gap source create the problem and write it like this:
It is not known—
One sentence statement is what is required
4. Sample and location – Identify sample, needed sample size,
and location (study phenomena with small numbers and
variables/groups with large numbers): 20 schools with heads
utilizing transformational leadership models to manage schools
and students. Students will be from both high school and
elementary levels. Both girls and boys across different school-
going ages will be selected as participants of the study.
Comment by Mohamed Ali: Use the following show how
to determine the sample :
Target population –what group of people are you interested in?
For example, special education teachers;
Target sample—the sample of the target population you will
draw your actual sample from. For example, special education
teachers from a large school district in Southwest United States
Sample –these individuals will provide the data you are
interested in collecting. For example, 20 teachers drawn from
the large Southwestern school district.
5. Research questions- Provide research questions to collect
data to answer the problem statement:How does
transformational leadership affect students’ performance at
school? Does transformational leadership increase student

6. engagement in learning? Does transformational leadership
improve students’ academic achievement? Comment by
Mohamed Ali: Write the central questions and then under each
the hypothesizes like this
RQ1: Is there a statistically significant relationship
between supervisors’ perceived EI and SpEd teacher job
satisfaction?
H10: There is no statistically significant relationship between
supervisors’ perceived EI and SpEd teacher job satisfaction.
H1a: There is a statistically significant relationship between
supervisors’ perceived EI and SpEd teacher job satisfaction.
6. Hypothesis/variables or Phenomena - Develop Hypotheses
with variables for each research question (quantitative) or
describe the phenomena to be better understood (qualitative):
Transformational leadership improves students’ academic
achievement in school. Transformational leadership improves
students’ level of engagement. Transformational leadership does
not improve student academic achievement. Transformational
leadership does not improve students’ engagement in learning.
a. Sampling Procedure- The main sampling procedure that will
be sued for this study is stratified random sampling. This
sampling procedure offers a convenient method of selecting
representative samples from subpopulations. This sampling
process is undertaken in the same way as simple random
sampling. As soon as each of the strata has been clearly defined,
subpopulation listing or frame is constructed of the people who
are the prospective participants (Mulcahy & Gregory,
2009). Stratified random sampling deals with some of the
concerns within the error introduced by random sampling. In
stratified random sampling, the population is subcategorized
into subgroups and subpopulations and the samples drawn from
such groups or strata. This method is useful when there is need
to make comparisons among the subpopulations, where the
subgroups have extremely different characteristics or in
situations in which there are concerns that a subgroup may be
underrepresented in the sample. This sampling process also

7. plays a crucial role in reducing possible biases and sampling
errors.
7. Methodology and design - Describe the selected methodology
and specific research design to address problem statement and
research questions: Quantitative design that will be used for the
study. There are various reasons why this method will be
utilized for research. For instance, quantitative design is more
reliable and objective. In addition, it can utilize statistics to
support generalization of findings. Moreover, this methodology
can be helpful in reducing and restructuring complex problems
to a limited number of variables. Correlational design will also
be used in this study as a tool to examine the relationship
between transformational leadership on student performance and
engagement. Comment by Mohamed Ali: Just
Quantitative method and correlation study is sufficient
8. Purpose Statement – Provide one sentence statement of
purpose including problem statement, sample, methodology, and
design: This study aims to examine the strength of relationship
between transformational leadership and student academic
achievement and engagement. This purpose is driven by the
desire to determine if leadership strategies can be used to
improve the performance of students within the American
environment since concerns have been raised that American
students record lower or average performance in relation to
their counterparts in other developed countries. Comment by
Mohamed Ali: The purpose statement is one sentence with
following
Purpose = Methodology + design + problem statement + target
population + location
9. Data collection – Describe primary instruments and sources
of data to answer research questions: Questionnaires will be the
main instruments for data collection. Questionnaires are not
only important in examining quantitative significance of

8. relationships between variables, but they can also act as
important tools for understanding the attitudes and perceptions
of students and teachers towards transformational leadership
model. Comment by Mohamed Ali: Just list the instrument
you will use to collect data for the variables you’ll measure
10. Data analysis – Describe the specific data analysis
approaches to be used to address research questions: Pearson’s
correlation coefficient will be utilized as the statistical test for
the examination of the relationships of the variables.
Comment by Mohamed Ali: This is not a paper
Say -Pearson correlation test will use be used to test
relationships of the variables – you will describe how you will
do that in the prospect and proposal
References
Boberg, J. E., & Bourgeois, S. J. (2016). The effects of
integrated transformational
leadership on achievement. Journal of Educational
Administration, 54(3), 357-
374.
Chen, S. S. (2014). The effects of transformational leadership of
principals on student
academic achievement (Doctoral dissertation).
Gkolia, A., Koustelios, A., & Belias, D. (2018). Exploring the
association between
transformational leadership and teacher’s self-efficacy in Greek

9. education system:
a multilevel SEM model. International Journal of Leadership in
Education, 21(2), 176-196.
Moutinho, L., & Hutcheson, G. D. (2011). The SAGE dictionary
of quantitative
management research. Sage Publications.
Mulcahy, J. W., & Gregory, J. L. (2009). A Handbook of
Statistics and Quantitative
Analysis for Educational Leadership. University Press of
America.
Norton, L. F. (2012). Teacher leadership style and student
engagement in the middle
school classroom. Dallas: Dallas Baptist University.