The Development of Leadership Qualities In 6-7-Year-Old Children in The Process of Joint Activities

Abstract

The article presents the description of an empirical study testing the effectiveness of a program for the development of leadership qualities in 6-7-year-old children in the process of joint activities titled “Everyone can become a leader!”. The structure of the program comprises three blocks: block 1 (cognitive) – “What is leadership and what a leader should be like”, objectives: the formation of children’s knowledge of about leadership, the qualities of a leader, the development of their creative thinking; block 2 (communicative) – “Learning to understand each other and communicate”, objectives: overcoming communication barriers, the development of children’s emotional sphere and communication skills; block 3 (behavioral) – “Learning to organize and manage”, objectives: the formation of children’s skills of organization and management of joint activities with peers. The main method of the study is a pedagogical experiment comprising the forming, the confirmatory, and the control experiment stages. The results of primary diagnostics conducted prior to the beginning of children’s lessons as a part of the program indicate the lack of differences between the experimental and control groups by the level of leadership qualities development. The analysis of the results of secondary diagnostics conducted at the end of the forming experiment stage demonstrated that children’s level of leadership qualities development in the experimental group exceeded the one in the control group. The authors can, therefore, conclude on the positive effect of the program on the development of leadership qualities in 6-7-year-old children and the opportunity of using the program in the educational process of preschool institutions.