Reconsidering Teacher Instructional Leadership: Boundaries Between Teacher Guidance and Student Autonomy in Higher Education
Teacher instructional leadership is a key variable for improving the quality of higher education, but the reasonable boundary between it and student autonomy has not been fully clarified. Based on constructivism theory and self-determination theory, this paper adopts a theoretical speculative method to systematically analyze the relationship between teacher instructional leadership and student autonomy in the context of higher education, reveals two typical manifestations of boundary confusion in university classrooms—“dominance suppressing autonomy” and “autonomy lacking guidance,” and explores the deep roots of boundary confusion from three dimensions: traditional teaching concepts, teachers’ professional quality, and the characteristics of higher education teaching. The study holds that teacher instructional leadership in higher education is not a one-way “dominance” or “control,” but a dynamic balance between professional guidance and student autonomy. The definition of a reasonable boundary should take “the balance between guidance and autonomy” as the core principle, and its specific connotation is reflected in three aspects: knowledge transmission, ability cultivation, and value guidance. University teachers can realize the organic integration of teacher guidance and student autonomy by updating teaching concepts, improving professional quality, and optimizing teaching design, thus providing a theoretical reference for optimizing university classroom teaching practice and promoting the realization of talent training goals in higher education.
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