Serendipity in Leadership: Initiating Structure and Consideration in the Classroom

Because feedback information from students has been found to improve teachers' classroom performance, factor analysis was used to report students' perceptions in a concise, meaningful manner to instructors. The emerging four factor structure over 2 years of data from 2084 students was found to be very stable, and relatively uninfluenced by class size or course level. The first two factors appeared similar to the two traditional dimensions of leader behavior, initiating structure and consideration, and it is conjectured that existing leadership theory might be applicable in the university classroom to enhance teaching effectiveness.