Examination of Rural High School Students' Perceptions on Leadership

• In Event: Roundtable Session 56
  In Roundtable Session: Leadership in Rural Contexts

Abstract

The study described in this paper elevates youth voices in defining youth leadership and broadens our understanding of the evolution of youth leadership knowledge along with their perspectives of leadership and experiences in its development. A two-year qualitative case study engages fifteen rural high school students and discovers youth ability to recognize leadership within themselves and others is interconnected with the extent of their leadership knowledge. The findings also report that youth associate leadership primarily with personal responsibility, organizational and managerial processes, global and community change, and service. Ethical values and personal ethics interconnect the aforementioned youth leadership components suggesting complexity and breadth of the examined phenomenon.

Author

• Victoria Sherif, University of Kentucky