‘Keeping it real’ authentic instructor-leadership, student engagement and performance, and leader distance

In higher education teaching, a leadership lens is used to conceptualize teaching quality as ‘instructor-leadership’. Instructor-leadership research has largely focused on transactional and transformational leadership. But, increasing student distress along with the existence of mediocrity and abusiveness in higher education teaching warrants the study of authentic instructor-leadership. The aims of this study are to show that (a) authentic instructor-leadership is related to students’ academic performance via the mechanism of student engagement and (b) leader distance moderates the relationship between authentic instructor-leadership and student engagement. The proposed moderated mediation model was tested using 620 undergraduate students from a university located in Trinidad. Using structural equation modeling, the findings supported student engagement as a partial mediator and leader distance as a moderator. This study contributes to leadership and education by (a) investigating a timely form of instructor-leadership that shifts the field toward morality in teaching, (b) identifying a key mechanism in authentic leadership research, and (c) empirically examining the role of leader distance while providing a novel and conceptually sound approach to doing so. Unexpected findings, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed. Recommendations are outlined for self-evaluation and behavioral training.