Building democracies in K-8 schools is a promising approach to increasing young people and educators’ civic knowledge, skills and dispositions. The Rendell Center for Civics and Civics Engagement leveraged strategies and concepts from the fields of civic education, student voice, and distributed leadership to build a youth-adult school governance system and schoolwide civic literacy curriculum at Edwin M. Stanton Elementary School in the School District of Philadelphia. Their yearlong effort to build schoolwide civic learning illustrates how civics can be an effective conduit for connecting curriculum and leadership practices: School improvement becomes both a collective endeavor and a means for teaching active citizenship.
This study developed measurement scales on student leadership capacity building through a survey of 280 students from nine U.S. high schools. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses resulted in a personal, interpersonal, organizational, and overall scale for building student leadership capacity. The scales included eight mechanisms that schools can use to enhance student leadership: pedagogy, relationships, radical collegiality, governance structure, research, group makeup, consistency, and recognition. The scale items also reflected three leadership competencies: critical awareness, inclusivity, and positivity. Focus groups and interviews with students and teachers in these nine schools supported survey findings and suggested implications for practice.
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