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You Can Go Your Own Way: Student Leader Development Pathways
Journal article

You Can Go Your Own Way: Student Leader Development Pathways

Catrina M Notari, Margaret Toich, Valerie Sessa and Jennifer Bragger
ACPA Developments, Vol.19(1)
03/16/2022

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Abstract

College Students Leadership Development
Developing student leaders is a major objective at many universities and colleges across the United States, with patterns indicating an increase in educators tackling this challenge in learning and practice (Dugan & Komives, 2010). According to the International Leadership Association, more than 2,000 curricular and co-curricular leader development programs (LDPs) exist at institutions across the nation (Guthrie et al., 2018). How to best approach developing student leaders is a gray area, with scholars and practitioners often leaving students to their “best guess” regarding how to proceed (Allen & Hartman, 2009). Some researchers have suggested that embracing service-based opportunities allow students to reflect on their own values, sense of self, and how they engage with their peers as a means towards leadership development (Dugan & Komives, 2010; Jones & Abes, 2004). In addition, most leadership development scholarship has focused on single interventions (Fernandez et al., 2021; Giroir & Austin, 2019; Strawn et al., 2017; Posner, 2009; DiPaolo, 2002), ignoring the reality that many students participate in multiple leader development opportunities during college. Little research to date has focused on leader development trajectories across interventions and over time. The purpose of this article is to highlight student leader development pathways students take while in college. Developing an understanding of the pathways that include all leader development activities will allow us to better understand the different ways student leader development unfolds during college and what students gain as a result.

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