Socially Responsible Leadership Capacity among Student Leaders

Abstract

Student leaders are key agents of social change, capable of facing complex challenges. There is widespread awareness at the university level to develop socially responsible leadership among students’ leaders. The Social Change Model of Leadership Development (SCM) has been specifically developed for higher education to increase students’ self-knowledge, to develop leadership competency, openness and accountability that would result in positive social change. The purpose of this study was to discover the impacts that student governance involvement and leadership activities have on students’ opinion about leadership for social change. Qualitative method through semi-structured interview was used to explore student perceptions of their leadership talent, the congruency between thoughts and action, and finally their commitment to the task. A total of 10 student leaders voluntarily participated in this study. They were selected through purposive sampling. The interview protocol was structured based on three core values in SCM: Individual, Group, and Community. Interview sessions were recorded, transcribed and then analysed using the thematic analysis method. Overall, the results show that the students directly and indirectly practised the values in the SCM model. Based on these results, this study therefore proposed that the university includes the SCM model in their student leadership training. This is crucial so that students would gain knowledge of the fundamental values in SCM in order to be more responsive to social issues.