Review and Synthesis of a Decade of Research on Transformational Teaching and Student Engagement

Education is of paramount importance for the development of people and society. The role of the teacher is crucial for good education. Well-designed teaching methods can help impart knowledge to students. On the other hand, students’ willingness and attention to the class are equally crucial for good classroom management. Lack of engagement from students can hamper their learning process. It is challenging for students and teachers to create an engaging classroom environment, but it is much needed to create and sustain an effective learning process. The present study attempts to synthesise prior research on transformational teaching and student engagement in the past decade. Research papers from top-tier journals were selected and filtered to achieve this objective. Post-filtration and selection, 192 articles were reviewed and summarised to arrive at the current research standpoint. This study examined the aspects studied considerably, further identified specific gaps, and indicated future research avenues for future researchers.


Introduction
The development of a country is fundamentally based on its education system.quality of life of individuals and society at large (Edgerton et al., 2011).It is said that "The destiny of a nation is being shaped in its classrooms".Teachers have the most important job globally as they are responsible for building positively inspired future generations.Teachers increase the productivity and creativity of students who are more likely to excel in their disciplines, ultimately leading to a country's economic development (Khan et al., 2015).However, it is pivotal to understand that academic excellence and the development of the education system in a country do not depend solely on teachers.Students, too, need to play a vital role.In the current age of digitalization and social media platforms, content availability is abundant.Students of Generation Z opine that they can gain knowledge from many sources, this perspective of students creates huge challenges for teachers to keep their students engaged and motivated.It is the role of teachers to keep track of students' engagement levels throughout their teaching period.
At the same time, this can only be possible with the cooperation of students.Both teacher's and student's engagement play a vital role in students' academic outcomes (Dueno, 2018) .Student engagement tends to fluctuate depending on the teacher's ability to effectively engage the classroom.As mentioned above along with the diffusion of technology, Covid-19 has forced-updated the education system in India towards adopting technology in the form of digitalization of education.This change has long been procrastinated by blaming a lack of resources, effective technology, and even the lack of learning opportunities.Indian teacher education is outdated, broke, and has fundamental problems as they thrive on 19th-century teaching practices and have minimal exposure to the latest 21st-century technology-based teaching practices has led to undertrained teachers who later become educators teaching the teachers and further worsens the Indian teacher education scenario.Like any other big change, this change was also messy and challenging and will take time to settle down for educators.This present scenario motivated us to review the prevalent literature concerning transformational teaching and student engagement.For this purpose, previous research published in top-tier journals is reviewed based on their contribution.

Transformational Teaching and Student Engagement
According to Rosebrough and Leverett (2011), transformational teaching is defined as the pedagogy designed to transform learners academically, socially, and spiritually.Initial studies in the past decade have tried to observe the role of Transformational teaching in enhancing student engagement in sports and physical activities (Beauchamp et al., 2011;Beauchamp & Morton, 2011).Some researchers have studied transformational teaching from pedagogy paradigms (Lin, 2011).Beauchamp and Morton (2011) conducted their study to understand the effect of transformational teaching on the students' engagement towards their physical activity, mediated through task self-efficacy, self-regulatory, self-efficacy, and self-determined motivation.Schools in Canada were taken into account, where the participants i.e., the physical education teachers and students, were randomized.Intervention was created in the experiment through transformational teaching, and the results revealed that students exhibited a higher level of intrinsic motivation during transformational teaching.Further, the results also confirmed that the students learning through transformational teaching exhibited better levels of self-efficacy and engagement.
A similar study was conducted by Bourne (2011) to understand the level of student engagement in leisure sports, post transformational mode of teaching where the authors surveyed 753 adolescent students at two-time intervals with a time gap of 8 weeks.The study disclosed that transformational teaching could explain significant variance in student self-efficacy.Further, a positive relationship was found between transformational teaching and student engagement.Similarly, Wilson et al. (2012) tried to study the phenomenon further holistically by trying to understand the role of transformational teaching in creating student engagement mediated through psychological needs satisfaction and motivation.Slavich and Zimbardo (2012) were the primary ones who tried to establish strong theoretical perspectives and formulated ground principles.These authors emphasized the student-centric active learning mode, further defining transformational teaching as "the expressed or unexpressed goal to increase students' mastery of key course concepts while transforming their learningrelated attitudes, values, beliefs, and skills."Transformational teaching involves creating effective relationships between teachers and students to enable knowledge sharing.Slavich and Zimbardo (2012) indicate that transformational teaching takes its theoretical roots from social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986) , transformative learning theory (Cranton, 2006) and intentional change theory (Boyatzis, 2006) .Wherein transformative learning theory draws its information from the transformational leadership theory (Avolio & Bass, 1995) .
Prior researchers had tried to explore the perceptions and experiences of teachers practising transformative teaching (Klerk et al., 2012) .After analyzing 68 structured questionnaires of the B.Ed. teachers the authors found that, even though their autonomy provided them the flexibility to design their classroom teaching methods, they could not implement transformational teaching due to lack of proper training.Some researchers like Mäkinen (2013) have tried to incorporate inclusiveness and engagement as a part of their study to evaluate the effectiveness of transformational teaching.Teachers report anxiety when they are handling an inclusive classroom, a sample was taken from 72 in-service teachers and 97 pre-service teachers.Post analysis, results exhibited significant linkages between inclusiveness and student engagement.They further emphasized the importance of inclusive classroom settings and transformational teaching.
Research in higher education regarding transformational teaching was conducted with the theoretical support of transformational leadership (Mawn, 2013) with the motive of conceptualising transformational teaching behaviours and framing prepositions with student engagement, Where, the researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with students and six faculty.The same research had a study-2 where the authors tried to conceptualize a model which can portray the variance in the association between transformative teaching behaviours and student engagement (Mawn, 2013) .A quantitative study was conducted with different samples (n= 241 and 349 respectively), and results revealed that there is a significant association between learning climate and transformational teaching, further, transformational leadershipled behavioural teaching led to extra effort, academic excellence, student satisfaction, student engagement, and academic performance.Some research studies have pointed out the similarities between effective teachers and leaders indicating transformational teaching traits (Akin & Neumann, 2013;Wright, 2013) .According to Wright (2013), credibility, creating a style, displaying emotions, and acknowledging differences can contribute to creating a thriving transformational teaching environment.Some works in this period even tried to explore the opinions of professors on adopting transformational teaching in universities (Cunningham-Davis, 2013) .Professors tried to test the effectiveness of performance reality shows as supplementary material for their class, they were able to see a clear improvement in the understanding and engagement of the students.
Transformational teaching can be adapted to any subject, and it is not limited to physical education or technology-aided subjects; some researchers have studied the aspects of transformational teaching for dealing with mathematics to the disadvantageous group (Warren & Miller, 2013) .They attempted to understand how developed student confidence can promote student engagement in mathematics class.For this purpose, the authors formulated RoleM Professional Learning Model.Where 12 teachers had participated thrice in the study over time, Post results it can be seen that the model was instrumental in improving their knowledge and teaching calibre.

Transformational Leadership-A Conceptual Basis For Transformational Teaching
While most of the education researchers were conducting their research in terms of testing the effectiveness of the policies, few researchers had tried to adopt the theories of other disciplines and tried to empirically test them in education research.This has paved the path for multidisciplinary research.Such adoption of a multidisciplinary approach is seen in the case of transformational teaching.
Transformational teaching is grounded in the theory of transformational leadership (Bass & Avolio, 1993).Simmons College, for its winter sessions of 2013, had tried to answer this dire pressing pedagogical challenge of student engagement by harnessing the benefits of transformational teaching (White & Nitkin, 2014).A participatory survey with 29 participants and focussed group discussions were conducted, at the end of the study; the results demonstrated that transformational teaching can aid in the development of personal learning, academic habits and attitudes, student leadership and a sense of community.
At the same time, Shonubi (2014) tried to test how transformative leadership principles can aid in different academic outputs in schools.Two schools with the same socio-economic background were taken for the study.The staff of the two schools i.e., the vice principals, academic directors and faculty are interviewed through semi-structured interviews which are taken as the data source for the study.Post analysis, the study revealed that monitoring and mentoring of the faculty through internal funding resulted in effective instruction-led delivery of the faculty.

Transformational Teaching-Technology, Behavior , And Allied Aspects
Transformational teaching is not only about the results or the output of the class.It is concerned with delivering a rich classroom experience to the students.J. Pounder (2014), through their systematic literature review of the outcomes of transformative leadership in the classroom context and found that identified the weakness of this approach and concluded transformational teaching to be studied as an independent phenomenon and indicated that the research of transformational teaching to be carried forward more systematically.These kinds of studies provided us with the motive to review the literature on transformational teaching related to the decade to find if the researchers had been able to work on these lines or not.
Transformational leadership principles were instrumental in initiating the research of transformational teaching.Post this, the research moved towards the behavioural aspects of transformational teaching.The study by Peters (2014) conceptualized a model to test the experience created by transformational teaching through the lens of three different psychological states, psychological safety, self-efficacy, perceived meaningfulness, and their effect on student satisfaction, effort, performance, and student engagement.An experimental design was employed to test the model empirically with 541 undergraduate students and three graduate instructors.The study described observable differences in the control group and experimental group.The students in the experimental group performed exceptionally well than the control group, psychological meaning mediated the relationship between transformational teaching and student outcomes, but academic self-efficacy and psychological safety did not.
Further, the diffusion of social media has motivated researchers to understand if social media can act as a tool to foster transformational teaching and student engagement.Rasiah (2014) investigated the effectiveness of social media in enhancing a team-based learning environment based on social learning theory.Students' learning experience and their motivation was assessed through content analysis of their Facebook postings.The results indicated that Facebook as a pedagogical tool is effective in the long run for enhancing student collaboration.Teacher participation in transformational teaching takes the front seat.Student-professor engagement, content knowledge, and individual consideration play a crucial role without which the transformational teaching mode of the classroom may not achieve its objective completely.Economos (2014) tried to understand graduate students' perceptions of the above aspects.A survey was conducted among 67 graduate business students and 70 graduate education students.There was a significant difference between the perceived professor-student engagement among graduate business students and graduate education students.It was a little bit higher in graduate business students than in graduate education students.When it comes to deep learning and content, both groups are in agreement at a similar level.Students had listed some key points like being approachable, clear communication, and integrating research into teaching to retain student engagement.As mentioned earlier, the diffusion of information and communication technology has changed the face of transformational teaching.Some studies have focussed on the design aspects of the tools concerning transformational teaching.Han et al. (2014) described Space X, a technologydriven collaborative learning platform, and briefed about the strategies for integrating technologies and learning.Further, Van Rensburg (2015) briefed about the strategies to be adopted for teaching architecture and design through transformational teaching.Some academic institutions have emerged to design and streamline the strategies by testing them practically (Boluk & Carnicelli, 2015) .Core science disciplines like environmental studies have also mentioned transformational teaching in their disciplines.The researchers in this area have insisted on the need for training in transformational teaching to explain and deal with complex environmental problems.For the same purpose, Ban et al. (2015) reviewed the literature on transformational teaching to understand pedagogical changes and advancements which they had linked with their modules and course curriculums.Some countries have tried incorporating transformational teaching into their curriculum and teaching mode at a policy level to enhance student-centric learning.This has enabled some scholarly works to evaluate the transformative teaching practices prevalent in those institutions.Jayawardena (2015) tried to understand what sort of transformational teaching practices are used by Sri Lankan schools that foster science education.What is Sri Lankan teachers' understanding of the policies of student-centric learning and the role of facilitation?For this purpose, they conducted focused group discussions with 12 teachers.The study's findings revealed that teachers used various teaching tools to achieve student engagement and achievement towards science.At this point, the evaluation of transformational teaching and its resulting consequences enabling student engagement were being studied in institutions where they were implemented at the policy level.J. S. Pounder et al. (2016) designed a system of peer-to-peer evaluation for faculty that involves students too, the prototype was tested at Lingan University in Hong Kong.This prototype presented potential areas of benefits the teachers can uncover post the enhancement of their grey areas and it indicated the pivotal role of student collaboration with faculty too.
Transformational teaching is more of an experience-based journey which can be highly subjective.Jones (2016) tried to capture the experiences of undergraduate sociology students and their engagement towards the classroom with the theoretical background of critical learning theory.Semi-structured interviews were conducted and rich qualitative data was gathered from the classroom experiences of 20 undergraduate students and 7 teachers.The study tried to answer whether transformational teaching has resulted in overall student empowerment and student engagement.Semi-structured interviews were conducted in this direction and all the participant's experiences were recorded and documented in humanised style.These studies and their underlined findings have motivated the researchers to investigate transformational teaching and student engagement through the lens of their dimensions.

Transformational Teaching And Student Engagement As Latent Constructs
Before the last five years, most of the studies related to transformational teaching and student engagement were conducted from the viewpoint of practice, pedagogy, policy, perspective, or action research to evaluate it as a project.Whereas from 2019, researchers started to evaluate transformational teaching and student engagement as variables under the study.This shift in the approach can be attributed to the desire of the researchers to derive more theoretical contributions from multidisciplinary research or to understand the existing phenomenon in depth.
On a practical note, increased awareness of various statistical methods and data analysis software may be one of the reasons for the significant shift in the approach towards academic research in the education discipline.Lifesaving disciplines like medicine require their students' utmost attention in class.Khakpour et al. (2019) tried to understand the effect of transformational teaching on student enthusiasm, academic engagement, and knowledgesharing behaviours.A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 384 medical students, and relationships among the constructs were empirically tested with a structural equation modelling approach.Results of the study show that there are significant positive relationships among the constructs.
Transformational teaching affects academic engagement, and academic enthusiasm and further academic engagement and academic enthusiasm affect knowledge-sharing behaviours.Further, at the university level, a longitudinal study was conducted by Pachler et al. (2019) to understand the effect of transformational teaching on Student motivation which was studied through course-related self-efficacy and trust in teachers.Consequently, on students' engagement, creativity and task performance, Data was collected from 165 university students in Germany at two-time intervals.It is observed that teacher course-related self-efficacy mediated between transformational teaching and student engagement, creativity and task performance.Positive learning outcomes are the primary goals of any educator.Any faculty who implements transformational teaching tries to achieve the same.conducted a qualitative study and employed a conceptual model to understand the interrelationships among motivation, engagement, transformational leadership, and authentic learning.Interpretive phenomenological analysis was conducted on holistically coded data to arrive at conclusions.Results indicated four seminal aspects of transformational leadership i.e., inspirational motivation, individual consideration, intellectual stimulation, and idealized influence, applied to the Japanese university classroom concerned with student burnout, student engagement, and authentic learning.
The diffusion of information and communication technology has resulted in the emergence of learning management systems.Learning management systems are capable of imparting quality inbound training.Learning management systems are capable of providing engagement towards the classrooms even in the virtual mode owing to their high interaction with the students.tried to evaluate the perceptions of learning management systems when giving inbound training through transformational teaching.Qualitative was conducted to understand the preference, utilisation, appreciation and satisfaction of learning management systems towards adult learners.The semi-structured interview revealed the faculty's positive response towards using the learning management system.
The effectiveness of transformational education was also studied by measuring 'student-centred instruction'.Talbert et al. (2019) evaluated studentcentred instruction in maths classrooms and its effect on student engagement and this relationship was tested through ethnicity.A total of 3883 students from sixth to twelfth grade were taken for the study.Multi-level analysis was used to test the relationships.Results revealed that student-centred instruction positively affects active behavioural and cognitive dimensions of mathematics engagement.Further, ethnicity moderated the effect between studentcentred instructions and mathematics engagement.A full-range model framework was used to support the empirical relationship between transformational teaching and autonomous learning skills (Erdel & Takkaç, 2019) .Responses were collected from 305 respondents, correlational analysis was performed.Results revealed that transformational teaching has a positive effect on learning autonomy.Student engagement relies on many other factors.Elmi et al. (2020) empirically tested the effect of academic help-seeking, transformational teaching, and perceived social support on student engagement, mediated by academic buoyancy.304 undergraduate students, were taken as samples for the study, after structural equation modelling, results exhibited that perceived social support and transformational teaching had a direct effect on student engagement.Secondly, transformational teaching, perceived social support and academic help-seeking indirectly affected academic buoyancy and engagement.The empirical model predicted a 31% variance in student engagement.
Along similar lines, research was carried out at Yozgat Bozok University in Turkey (Yüner, 2020) .Where they tried to empirically test the relationship between transformational teaching and its effect on student's self-efficacy.Data for the study was collected from 915 university students, and was analysed using descriptive statistics and the model was tested using structural equation modelling.Considerate intellectual stimulation" and "charisma, dimensions of transformational teaching affect self-efficacy.Trigueros et al. (2020) were inclined to evaluate transformational teaching and its effect on academic motivation, resilience, burnout and academic performance.3354 university students participated in the survey, transformational teaching has a positive effect on academic resilience and motivation.Academic resilience has a negative effect on burnout and has a positive effect on academic performance, lastly, burnout hurts academic resilience.Student engagement can be attained through the support of good animation.Tan and Abdullah (2020) studied the contribution of animation to experiential learning and its effect on student engagement.The authors tried to strengthen their viewpoint with their logical argumentation and supporting arguments, making the entire study descriptive.Teaching practices are largely instrumental in the sharing of knowledge.Mahboob et al. (2020) tested the effect of transformational teaching on the long-term growth of knowledge and student satisfaction.A quantitative study was carried and data was collected through a survey.Responses were collected from 50 nursing students, where the results depicted transformational teaching to have a strong effect on overall learning and student success as well as their satisfaction.
The effectiveness of transformational teaching was evaluated in the context of mild intellectually disabled students (Ewing, 2020) .A qualitative study was conducted to understand the effect of student-centered learning, i.e. a dimension of transformational teaching on student engagement, when there is usage of technology in the classroom.Semi-structured interviews were conducted to understand the rich experiences, thematic analysis was conducted to reveal that even though the students had some distractions.The students with intellectual disabilities showed increased student engagement, student participation, growth and confidence.The usage of technology improved the mainstream learning of students with mild intellectual disability.
Taking support from self-determination theory, Karimi and Sotoodeh (2020) empirically tested the effect of psychological needs satisfaction on student academic engagement, mediated by intrinsic motivation.Data was taken from 365 agriculture students from 5 public universities in Iran.Data was analysed through structural equation modelling with the help of smart PLS-SEM.Results revealed that the dimensions of psychological needs satisfaction i.e., basic psychological needs of autonomy, relatedness and competence, affect intrinsic motivation.Secondly, psychological needs satisfaction positively affected academic engagement, mediated through intrinsic motivation.Similar constructs were studied through the theoretical support of self-determination theory.
Shin and Bolkan (2021) tried to understand how intellectually stimulating behaviours affect student motivation.Data was collected from 418 undergraduate students.Survey items gathered data regarding instructor teaching behaviour and student engagement.The structural regression model revealed that intellectual stimulation has a strong positive effect on students' intrinsic motivation.Further.It had an indirect effect on student engagement and learning and supporting self-efficacy.Further, intellectual simulating behaviours have a positive association between engagement, peer relations, and supporting self-efficacy, thereby fostering student intrinsic value.Heinrich et al. (2021) designed a GORP (Gravity, Ownership, Relationship, and Place) conceptual framework, for testing experiential learning and providing a theory of change.Basic psychological needs and their effect on academic engagement were tested by, Dostmohamadi et al. (2021), further, the authors also tested the mediation effect of academic self-efficacy and academic emotions.A survey was conducted with 325 high school students, selected through random cluster sampling.Relationships between basic psychological needs, academic self-efficacy, academic engagement and academic excitement.The relationships between the constructs were tested using structural equation modelling using LISREL.Findings revealed that basic psychological needs had a positive effect on self-efficacy, emotions, and academic engagement.Further, it had exhibited an indirect effect on academic engagement and had mediated through self-efficacy and academic emotions.Lastly, academic self-efficacy had a direct effect on academic emotions and academic engagement.
During the outbreak of Covid-19, there has been a lot of disruption in education during the lockdown.Teuber et al. (2021) tried to understand the relationship between student satisfaction, optimism, pessimism, satisfaction, academic engagement, the intention of dropping out, well-being, and depression.Data has been collected from 477 German college and university students.Results from structural equation modelling indicated that student satisfaction with institutional strategies has a positive relationship between psychological need satisfaction and engagement.Student optimism too had a positive relationship between need satisfaction and engagement.On the contrary, pessimism has a negative relationship between need satisfaction and engagement.Further, academic engagement has a negative linkage to dropout intentions.Whereas, student satisfaction has a significant relationship between depression and wellbeing.
Along similar lines, during the COVID-19 time, Souza et al. (2021) tried to understand the effect of English language teachers' attitudes on student motivation and engagement.An online survey was conducted and data was collected from 205 language teachers and 317 language students.Results of the study revealed that teachers' pedagogical ideas were positive when it came to technology-enabled classrooms.When it comes to gender, female teachers showed a strong belief towards student-centred learning.On the other hand, male teachers held a strong belief towards technology-enabled teach-ing.Language learning motivation and engagement were also high among the students.Further, the relationships established indicated that the firmer the instructor's belief in student-centric learning and technology-enabled learning, the students tend to be more engaged.Academic performance is not dependent solely on teaching, it also depends on students' individual factors.
Javadi- Elmi et al. (2022) tried to understand the effect of personal, peer, family, and educational factors on academic engagement.Further, the mediating effect of academic buoyancy between the constructs.Data was collected from 304 university students selected through random cluster sampling.Poststructural equation modelling, results portrayed that academic self-efficacy, perception of classroom structure acceptance of help-seeking, permissive parenting styles, and transformational teaching have indirect effects on academic engagement mediated through academic buoyancy.

Research Methodology
For the review and synthesis of the prior literature, papers were searched through Google Scholar, and the keywords "Transformational teaching" and "Student engagement" were used to search the relevant articles.After gathering the papers related to transformational teaching and student engagement, they are filtered in line with the objective of the paper.Papers from the year 2010 to 2022 were scrutinised for the review and synthesis of the literature.A total of 691 papers were found after giving the search.From the relevant papers, papers published in top-tier journals were selected and after filtration 192 papers were selected for the study.A summative literature review was conducted and synthesised in chronological order.Figure 1 indicates the inclusion criteria of the research papers.The first step involved searching relevant papers on 'Transformational Teaching' and 'Student Engagement" with the aid of Google Scholar.Secondly, papers which were part of quality databases like Web of Science and Science Direct were preferred over the others.Further, their individual contribution to the discipline was also taken into consideration.After satisfying the above conditions, the papers were incorporated into the systematic review.

Discussion
Research on transformational teaching and student engagement has gone through many phases and perspectives over the last decade.Initially, the works concerning transformational teaching were studied from the viewpoint of pedagogy, practice, and policy, additionally, various conceptual frameworks and grounded principles were suggested and formulated by the researchers.However, it is important to know that the initial studies were largely subjective where the grounded principles are yet to be empirically tested, further, aspects related to the effectiveness of transformational teaching, and perspectives of high school and university students as well as teachers were evaluated.Studies related to transformational teaching and student engagement were conducted in various disciplines like sports, nursing, science, mathematics and English.However, most of the studies were qualitative in nature and the results were extracted through the semi-structured opinions of the subjects, this resulted in less methodological rigour and ambiguous findings.Post these works, research related to transformational teaching and student engagement depended on the theoretical foundations of transformational leadership were empirically tested and their relationships with positive student behaviours like motivation, self-efficacy, academic performance etc.All the behavioural constructs were tested as first-order constructs across diversified contexts, future researchers can focus on empirically testing the related second-order constructs and the dimensions within the constructs specifically, to gain deeper insights into the phenomenon.Methodologically most of the studies are either qualitative or cross-sectional, employing rigid methods like experimentation or action research to study the relationships among the constructs and add more value to future studies.Some researchers have tried to study the role of technology in enabling transformative teaching and student engagement, these kinds of studies focus more on the content and design, while future researchers in this line can work on the aspects related to immersive technology and the adoption of futuristic technologies for gaining rich insights.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Flow Chart Of The Paper Inclusion Criteria For Review And Synthesis Of Literature.