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Student leadership in the middle years of schooling

  • 25 Nov 2015 2:24 PM
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    Message # 3659003
    Anne Coffey

    Shane Lavery and I have just commenced a research project investigating student leadership in the middle years.  We would be interested in extending our conversation with interested parties.  Our primary research question is 'What does student leadership look like in the middle years of schooling?'
  • 07 Dec 2015 10:01 AM
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    Reply # 3677702 on 3659003
    Deleted user
    To clarify, is it a question of what is "Currently" occuring in student leadership, or what "Should" be occuring? In my experience these are very different.

    I see a lot of schools give token lip service currently to student leadership in the middle years. There is no real development, and minimal role descriptions and functions of student leaders.

    I have been working with some schools in developing a 'Leadership Development Program', which involves:
    - Clearly defined purpose for student leaders
    - Clearly defined structures and roles.
    - Personality testing, including identifying strengths, weaknesses and areas for development, for a wide range of students. This helps in identifying potential leaders, and raises the pool and skill level of students.
    - Purposeful and structured leadership development program, which teaches skills to wider range of students in the pool.
    - Coaching and mentoring of student leaders.

    I am happy to go into more detail if required. 


  • 08 Dec 2015 10:16 AM
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    Reply # 3686800 on 3659003
    Anne Coffey

    Hi Heath

    Shane and I have approached our research with quite an open mind and have simply asked the participating middle years leaders or principals what is happening in their schools.  Quite often the response has been to describe what currently takes place but has often been followed with 'we need to be doing more.' At this point we have found that student leadership is very different in the middle years and is focused much more on the development of the 'whole student' rather than just assigning tokenistic roles. We would both be very happy to chat further to you about your work and how our findings might inform it. 

Adolescent Success Inc. (formerly MYSA Middle Years of Schooling Association) 

Adolescent Success,  P.O. Box 2175 Toowong 4066, QLD, Australia

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