This blogpost will outline how SSAT’s analysis and synthesis of research findings have helped us to redevelop our offer to schools in enhancing provision for student leadership development.
Lesson 1: Students’ views of leadership are highly democratic: they are non-hierarchical, focused on social returns, and based on relational and team-oriented competencies.
There is some convergence in the literature about what matters most for students looking to take on leadership roles. One strand suggests that they are less interested in hierarchies and more interested in relational approaches (Dempster et al, 2021), with a focus on influence rather than control (Bowman, 2013). Such influence ought to be centred on issues that matter to them (Mitra, 2006) as they see leadership as a contribution towards enhancing “social returns”, such as tackling inequality, rather than the narrow “economic returns” often associated with adult leaders (Wright et al, 2023). There is a notably democratic element to what students want from leadership opportunities (Coffey & Lavery, 2014), with less focus on leaders and more focus on leadership (Frost & Roberts, 2011).
Wright et al (2023) surveyed almost 7,000 student leaders to identify what skills and aptitudes they felt were most important in leaders. Their top ten responses were (in order) confidence, communication, honesty, responsibility, listening, respectfulness, integrity, empathy, team player, and compassion. These priorities in admired leadership chime strongly with the insights shown above about student leadership – for students – being relational, linked with social returns and democratic. They also demonstrate quite starkly an approach that is less notably individualistic and instead drive by team-oriented competencies (Bowers et al, 2015).
Lesson 2: Student leadership development is age-related not age-constrained: it involves the incremental development of capabilities and operates in a variety of ‘spaces’.
Researchers often use the metaphor of a continuum when exploring student leadership. For some, this is age-related. For others, it is about capabilities and how opportunities that feed into these capabilities are sequenced. For others, it is broadly spatial in nature.
Age-related: Wang (2023) locates the primary age-range for student leadership development as being in the secondary years of education, although he is clear that this cannot be collapsed into specific year-group expectations. Karagianni and Montgomery (2017) also identify adolescence as an important time for leadership growth. Despite this, Coffey and Lavery (2014) argue that this period – which they name ‘the middle years’ between 10 and 15 – is one in which there are limited formal opportunities provided for student leadership at the highest levels. Such opportunities are often reserved for the senior students on the brink of adulthood for which they are not always well-prepared because of the dearth of middle-years opportunities.
Capabilities: Mitra (2006) argues persuasively that student voice is central: being heard is a first key step in developing student leadership capability, followed by collaboration with adults that, in turn, can lead to the building of leadership capacity. Other researchers suggest that schools must scaffold skills development through a continuum of opportunities that build progressively over time (Coffey & Lavery, 2014) and prioritise the teaching of participation (Frost & Roberts (2011). These scaffolded opportunities to practise leadership should be embedded in lessons (Hay & Dempster, 2004) through direct instruction (Lyons et al, 2020), which is rich in a focus on key leadership skills such a critical thinking and reasoning (Freeborn, 2000).
Spatial: According to some theorists, schools supporting student leadership need to consider the full range of spaces in which it operates. These might include the physical spaces of the classroom, extra-curricular provision, the local community and the international community (Wright et al, 2023; Black et al, 2014). They might also include the relational spaces from personal to interpersonal and to organisational (Lyons et al, 2020). Finally, they might include spaces judged by status, ranging from the formal school-sanctioned opportunities to the informal, often liminal, leadership spaces that are often carved out by those in minority groups and/or those under-represented in the formal spaces (Coffey & Lavery, 2014).
Of course, there is significant overlap between these multiple spaces where students of all ages develop their capabilities together with each other and with the adults around them.
Lesson 3: School support for ensuring that students encounter leadership opportunities in daily practice must be driven by ethos, systems, relationships, and highly engaged leaders.
Wright et al (2023) suggest that a fundamental for developing effective student leadership work in schools is the creation of a “pervading ethos” that student can provide leadership and can be taught how to do so. Lyons et al (2020) stress the need for clarity of organisational processes, particularly those around governance that involves students, such as a written constitution and an empowered advisory board. In a similar vein, Frost and Roberts (2011) caution that such school- based processes need to have clarity about their purpose and scope to be effective.
Beyond ethos and bureaucratic norms, Mitra (2006) points to the importance of relationships that are conscientious and continuous, producing developed patterns of interaction that are aligned with espoused values such as equity. How groups interact matters. Black et al (2014) concur, noting that young people become cynical about democratic rhetoric that “does not translate into the kind of experience they are led to expect”.
How ethos, systems and relations are grounded in practice is thus of huge significance in building effective student leadership. Shier (2001) identifies the importance of ‘Openings’ to ensure student readiness to participate, ‘Opportunities’ in which the resources and knowledge required to participate are provided, and ‘Obligations’ which ensure the continuity of student leadership engagement over time. Hill (2022) stresses that schools need to take a dialogic approach, acknowledge power differentials, and be inclusive without being tokenistic.
And finally, the importance of adult support, including the “imprimatur” of the headteacher “cannot be overestimated” if student leadership is to take on a whole-school dimension (Coffey & Lavery, 2014). For those staff leading on school leadership, who are seen as being just as important at the headteacher, conveying their belief in students and recognising their achievements are key expectations. But whilst this view of key postholders is important, it is in the daily practices within classrooms that students see it as important that their potential to lead is recognised (Wright et al, 2023). Classrooms can become communities when student needs and aspirations are given expression and considered, or not (Frost & Roberts, 2011). Provision of professional learning for all staff and evaluation of existing student leadership work can help to ensure that day-to-day practice does not become a barrier (Black et al, 2014).
Conclusions: Taking lessons from the research into our practice at SSAT
Having updated the evidence base on which our student leadership work is based, we have enhanced the way in which we think about impact in line with the views of students. The overview of the six strands of our Student Leadership for IMPACT model is shown below.
As you can see, the model reflects the focus of young people on team-building competencies: the knowledge, skills and abilities underpinning relational activity towards common goals. We have connected this work to the democratic impulse of students and the importance of them in working towards the things that matter to them, the social returns from leading within schools.
We have now aligned all our bespoke student leadership training with these six facets of effective student leadership. Our consultation conversations with schools, accessed via our ‘book a call’ feature, begin with some contextual questions to find out which elements of IMPACT are most pertinent to your needs as a school and the needs of your student leaders.
We have also upgraded our support for student leader recognition scheme to reflect the variety of spaces within which student leadership flourishes. Our newly enhanced levels of award (shown below) reflect the findings that student leadership knowledge, skills and abilities can be taught and develop over time (without being fixed to any particular year group)
The progression through the award’s levels focuses on the foundational knowledge and skills that student leaders need and that can be ensured in the daily spaces of the classroom and around the school. At the upper levels of the award, the spaces beyond the classroom become more important but, at all levels, there are opportunities to recognise informal (as well as formal) student leadership.
In line with the final lessons from research outlined above, we have also introduced a school recognition scheme that mirrors the focus on what student leaders are empowered to do but which also enables scrutiny of the undergirding ethos, systems, relationships and leadership that enables the daily experience of students to include leadership development and practice.
For both recognition schemes, we provide schools and student leaders with the resources to audit their work as a self-evaluation exercise (this is free for SSAT member schools). But given the importance of evaluation of practice in the research literature, we also offer schools and individual student leaders to have their self-evaluation authenticated and accredited through desktop review and school visits.
Based upon our research synthesis, we have developed our staff professional learning offer to reflect these (and more) insights. Our ‘Ensuring Student Leadership has IMPACT in your Setting’ programme will help those responsible for leading student leadership meet the high standards expected of them by students. To complete our evidence-informed offer to schools, we are developing a Student Leadership for IMPACT Franchise offer to give multi-academy trusts access to our resources and the training with which to deliver them to quality assure and improve provision.
If you would like to know more about any of the above, you can sign up for a free webinar on the changes we have made to our longstanding already market-leading support for schools in helping ensure that student leadership has IMPACT. Alternatively, if you would like to discuss the needs of your setting, you can book a call directly with Keven Bartle, our expert on student leadership with no cost and no obligation.
Bibliography
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