self-perceptions in the student leadership exercise at the university of Granada

Abstract

This work focuses on the self-perception of the exercise of student leadership, this is an essential construct to carry out university policies for the promotion, training and strengthening of student representation. The objective of our research is to know the self-perceptions of the leadership exercised by the university students of the Faculty of Education Sciences of the University of Granada and thus verify if those who hold a representative position are true leaders. To analyze the construct we have carried out a review of studies on leadership and student representation in Higher Education. We have reviewed the instruments that are most effective in characterizing leadership and selected the most appropriate to objectives, S-LPI by Kouzes and Posner (2008), applying it to the population of student representatives of the Faculty of Education of the University of Granada . In this sense, our work has a descriptive interest through a quantitative study of non-experimental design using a survey as an instrument for collecting information, the main objective of which is to know the self-perception of leadership exercised by university students of the Faculty of Sciences of Education at the University of Granada in its different dimensions. The results have allowed us to make a description of the sociodemographic data of student leaders at the same time as to analyze the self-perceptions they make in the exercise of leadership, with the best valued dimension being training others and the one that is least effective when faced with change. Therefore, we conclude by presenting the shortcomings that we find in our leaders, since we find that they are not prepared to encourage change and innovation in the work of others, as well as to ensure that the agreements reached are fulfilled. Finally, we propose to design a leadership training program for student representatives to help them compensate for those deficiencies that they find in the exercise of their position.