AN INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY OF STUDENT LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT (SLD)
Leadership is putting yourself and those around you in a postition to succeed. Leadership development is how students learn to do that through experiences and educational interventions.
This executive summary is to supply institutions, education coordinators, and educators with knowledge and resources about SLD. It was created from a formal literature review in 2015. In this first section, below, I provide working definitions that were used throughout this project that are based on literature and a background history of leadership education. In the larger sections that follow this page, I dive into resources on the importance of Student Leadership Development (WHY), leaders in the field of curriculum development (WHO), and finally a section on how educators can takes steps to implement leadership education interventions (HOW).
DEFINTIONS
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Leadership is putting yourself and those around you in a position to succeed with integrity. In this way leadership is not only focused on group goals but interactions, relationships, and ethics, knowing right from wrong (Teton Science Schools, 2014a; Ingelton, 2013). Leadership skills and compentencies are the things needed to accomplish this (i. e. communication, teamwork, personal devopment of values, etc.)
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Student leadership development is comprised of educator interventions and real life experiences, that cause people to change their behaviors and actions towards leadership (Mozhgan et. al., 2011; Seemiller & Murray, 2013).
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While student leadership development is a more sweeping or all encompassing term, leadership education are those experiences through specific interventions, which serve to change behavior towards leadership (Brungardt, 1997).
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Leadership training is recognized as learning activities such as ropes courses, team-building games, and group discussions that are incorporated into leadership education (Brungardt, 1997).
Student leadership development is a very all-encompassing term. Leadership education refers to specific interventions educators create.
HISTORY OF STUDENT LEADERSHIP
Until the 1950s leadership was viewed with an industrial point of view (Eich, 2008; Ingleton, 2013; Rosch & Caza, 2012). The industrial paradigm of leadership was focused on a hierarchy model, based on control and division of labor (Rosch & Caza, 2012). Because of this past paradigm, the education system has relied on extracurricular activities to engage certain (particularly males and athletes) students in leadership education and development (Van Velsor & Wright, 2012; Whitehead, 2009).
Since the 1950s, there has been a shift in our understanding of leadership. There is now a post-industrial orientation to leadership that has given way to a leadership orientation focused on relationships, trust, and ethics (Rosch & Caza, 2012). This new view on leadership can be applied to wider audiences; it is viewed as learnable, and can be focused on capacities expanding leadership education and training opportunities (Ingleton, 2013).
Today, leadership education has not escaped the strong pull of the educational standards system. (Komives & Smedick, 2012). In 1996 the first student leadership standard was adopted from the Council for the advancement of Standards Education (CAS) (Komives & Smedick, 2012). In their standards for Student Leadership Programs, CAS stated that leadership programs must
advance students in four categories (Komives & Smedick, 2012).
Komives and Smedick contend that the use of these standards give credibility and reliability to student leadership development programs or the organizations running the programs. From these standards grew the “International Leadership Association’s Guiding Questions for Leadership Education Programs” (International Leadership Association, 2009). These guiding questions on context, conceptual framework, content, teaching and learning, and outcomes and assessment were used to evaluate leadership programs (International Leadership Association, 2009).
It is important to realize however that the standards and development discussed here is being focused on the college level, pushing universities to make the move in leadership development (Ingleton, 2013). In more recent literature there has been an argument for combining student leadership development opportunities into the formal education model at younger ages (Bowman, 2014; Brungardt, 1997; Dyment et al., 2014; Ponder et al., 2011; Seemiller & Murray, 2013; Van Velsor & Wright, 2012; Whitehead, 2009).