TITLE:
Socially Responsible Leadership Capacity among Student Leaders
AUTHORS:
K. Faridah Mydin, Muhammad Syawal Amran
KEYWORDS:
Student Leadership, Student Governance, Social Change Model, Malaysia
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.10 No.12,
November
29,
2019
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.