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Understanding Transformative Leadership Among High School Students: Creating Conditions to Lead

abstract: High schools throughout the country posit leadership as one of the characteristics they develop while students are with them. All too often though, this leadership development is limited to those in title positions of leadership or is only accomplished through informal training mechanisms. The challenge for educators is to develop leadership that can critically address community problems, a challenge that is made more difficult in a broader social environment that is becoming politically, economically, and racially more polarized. This action research study investigated how high school students understand transformative leadership as one way to address this problem.

Using a hermeneutic orientation, this qualitative study investigated high school students’ (N = 8) understanding of transformative leadership. Situated within a leadership class open to any 11th or 12th grader, participants engaged with a community-based, service-learning project as a method to enact their leadership in a meaningful way. The use of Catholic Social Teaching as a way to frame the service-learning project allowed for a direct connection with the school’s Catholic identity and mission. Data sources included reflection journals, interviews, focus groups, and a researcher observation journal.

Findings from the study suggest that high school students understand and enact transformative leadership through participation in a service-learning project. Participants understood transformative leadership to different extents, indicating that transformative leadership develops in different stages. These results, along with implications for future research, are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Leadership and Innovation 2016

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:asu.edu/item:38497
Date January 2016
ContributorsSorkin, David Lee (Author), Liou, Daniel (Advisor), Koro-Ljungberg, Mirka (Committee member), Frabutt, James (Committee member), Arizona State University (Publisher)
Source SetsArizona State University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeDoctoral Dissertation
Format176 pages
Rightshttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/, All Rights Reserved

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