Moving from Competing to Complementary: UnderstandingtheInfluenceofPersonalNarrativeswhen Designing Leadership Studies Curriculum

Abstract

Complex and adaptive challenges threaten human well-being and sustainability. However, our leadership graduates often lack the capacity and or commitment to address these challenges in a meaningful way. This paper details a five-year study exploring the impact of an interdisciplinary undergraduate course on the development of global capacities, complex Adaptive Leadership, Socially Responsible Agency, and systems thinking. The course instructors used innovative and intentionally divergent learning methods to challenge students to serve as stewards of their own knowledge and facilitators of their own learning through the confrontation of authentic and complex challenges. The researchers note transferable qualitative findings that demonstrate the profound impact of the noted leadership learning experience on the development of Socially Responsible Agency, along with Adaptive Leadership capacity and systems thinking.

Student Affairs Leadership Educators’ Negotiations of Racialized Legitimacy

“…A contemporary body of work provides the foundation for knowledge about leadership educators, focusing on their demographics (Dugan et al, 2013;Jenkins & Owen, 2016;Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership, 2019;Owen, 2012), pedagogical strategies (Jenkins, 2012(Jenkins, , 2013, and professional identity development (GuramatunhuCooper & Lyons, 2017;Priest & Seemiller, 2018;Seemiller & Priest, 2015. First, leadership educators are overwhelmingly white and woman-identified, especially in cocurricular programs (Jenkins & Owen, 2016).…”

Exploring Multiple Contexts and Shared Perspectives of Leadership Educators

“…Building from GuramatunhuCooper and Lyons (), positionality as expressed through narratives provides a pathway to unveil how leadership educators express their agency. Positionality is the people, places (e.g., geography, institution, department), things, and events that influence leadership educators and the impact they make in their work.…”

“…As leadership educators, we enter curricular and co‐curricular spaces through different ways of knowing and being, and with multiple worldviews and philosophies (GuramatunhuCooper & Lyons, ). Informed by Chapter 1 of this volume, we embody the “process” and “product” of professional identity development by individually and collectively reflecting on our paths to leadership education.…”