Denoting and Comparing Leadership Attributes and Behaviors in Group Work

TL;DR

This study investigates leadership behaviors in a physics class that emphasizes group work and feedback, aiming to identify traits and actions associated with effective student leaders.

Contribution

It develops a codebook of leadership traits and applies it to compare leadership styles among students in an active learning environment.

Findings

Identified key leadership traits from literature

Applied codebook to real classroom data

Compared leadership styles of two student leaders

Abstract

Projects and Practices in Physics (P$^3$) is an introductory physics class at Michigan State University that replaces lectures with a problem based learning environment. To promote the development of group based practices, students all receive group and individual feedback at the end of each week. The groups are comprised of four students, one of which often takes on the role of being the group's "leader." Developing leadership based skills is a specific learning goal of the P$^3$ learning environment and the goal of this research is to examine what leadership-specific actions/traits students in P$^3$ demonstrate while working in their group. The initial phase of this study examined multiple pieces of literature to identify possible characteristics and behaviors that may present themselves in potential leaders -- creating a codebook. This phase of the study applies the codebook to in-class data to compare two tutor-labeled leaders and their leadership styles.