Leadership Development in Higher Education

Abstract

The research available on the topic of leadership development is vast and comprehensive, however it is also quite fragmented, mainly focused on executive programs, and lacks a shared grounding theory. The first part of this dissertation is dedicated to a review of the current state of leadership development and to the methodologies, models, and tools available for developing and assessing leadership skills in the context of higher education. The second part is focused on the Leadership course offered to the master's degree students of Ca' Foscari University in Venice which revolves around the topic of resonant leadership and the six leadership styles developed by Goleman in 1995, namely the aggregating, authoritarian, demanding, democratic, inspiring, and supporting styles. The main learning tools employed in the course are journaling, peer coaching, and personal development plans, which collocates this thesis in the discourse about adult development theory, and leadership skills were assessed through BELEADER360©, a multirated tool developed by the Ca’ Foscari Competency Centre. To answer our research question, which regards the efficacy of the Leadership course in developing leadership behaviors, a quasi-experiment was carried out with a pre-and post-test methodology and non-randomized control group and employed quantitative and qualitative data collection methods to gather further data about the effects of the various tools.