Cultivating Student Leadership in the Flipped Classroom

This paper outlines the design and implementation of an educational approach to cultivate student leadership in a flipped classroom by facilitating a positive learning relationship between the learner and the facilitator through shared leadership and flexible assessments. The aim is to enable learners to abandon the notion of the teacher being the ‘sage on the stage’ and adapt to learning accomplished through interaction. Such an environment enables learners to actively contribute towards their success by taking ownership of their learning. The paper describes the findings of a learner-centred educational approach implemented for an IT Mathematics module run in the flipped classroom model. Student performance over five consecutive occurrences of the module was compared – the first three were prior to implementing the said approach; and the last two implemented the student leadership approach. Early qualitative and quantitative results of the student leadership approach indicate improved student performance and student satisfaction. Students have requested that this model be implemented in more modules