2 minute read
by Dr. Paul Parham and Prof. Gloria Moss 44
development include taking further steps to encourage students to express their concerns, creating an environment for minority voices to be heard, and implementing further strategies to improve student confidence.
In terms of its overall significance, this research provides valuable insights into the positive impact of inclusive teaching styles on student performance, motivation and mental wellbeing, suggesting that these positive effects should be translated into practical classroom-based teaching strategies. It is also hoped that this study piques an interest for any schools interested in undertaking educational research, either replicating this study or carrying out further studies into the impact of leadership on student performance. Schools interested in collaborating should contact Sevenoaks School's Institute for Teaching and Learning.
More information on this study can be found in Innovate, the annual academic journal from Sevenoaks School's Institute for Teaching and Learning: <https://www.sevenoaksschool.org/teachinglearning/research/innovate/>.
Figure 1: Scatterplot of student performance versus teachers’ inclusive leadership score.
BIO Dr Paul Parham is Teacher of Mathematics at Sevenoaks School & Honorary Lecturer at Imperial College London (<pep@sevenoaksschool.org>).
Prof Gloria Moss is Professor of Marketing and Management at Buckinghamshire New University and IPE Management School, Paris (<gloriamoss@protonmail.com>).
Introduction and background
How can we help our youth to develop their leadership skills and behaviours? When pupils are given leadership roles in school they develop maturity quicker. Yet, pupils perceive leadership as a relational process rather than solely involving someone in a formal badge wearing position. To explore pupil leadership perceptions and its relationship to wellbeing as well as hope, sense of school membership and academic self-regulation, a research study was conducted at Sevenoaks school by Dr. Ceri Sims (Chartered Psychologist, Buckinghamshire New University) and Paul Thompson (Head of Geography, Sevenoaks school). The survey was completed by just under 250 pupils.
Pupils as leaders - It is not all about wearing a badge
Results
The key predictions were that higher levels of perceived leadership would predict a higher sense of belonging and internal self-regulation which will in turn predict higher levels of both hope and student wellbeing. The results showed that experiencing formal leadership positions was associated with having more leadership identity and responsibility as well as a stronger sense of school membership. However, of particular interest is that pupils who regarded themselves as someone who shows informal leadership behaviours such as community service, mentoring, helping others and involvement in organising school event or activities also had higher leadership identity, responsibility perceptions and a higher sense of school belonging. In fact, seeing oneself as a leader through everyday informal behaviours was more important than wearing a badge when it came to being hopeful about the future: only those with higher formal leadership self-perceptions reported having higher levels of Hope. The hope scale measured Snyder’s hope theory (Snyder et al., 1991) whereby having high hope involves setting more goals, developing pathways to achieve them and having agency self beliefs to motivate them to use those strategies to reach their goals.
