Developing grade 12 student council members’ leadership skills to execute their leadership tasks effectively

Students are future builders of a nation. Therefore, special attention needs to be paid on flourishing their leadership skills both in developed and developing countries including Pakistan. Various researches have been carried out regarding this emerging field of study in Pakistan. However, there is still a need to prepare a comprehensive program for developing leadership skills in school and college students. Present study could be seen as the first step towards the formulation of any such program. This study was designed to develop grade 12 student council members\u27 leadership skills so that they may execute their leadership tasks effectively at a private girls\u27 higher secondary school in Karachi Pakistan. A collaborative action research methodology was employed to conduct the study. Seven students and a teacher were selected through purposive sampling procedure. Semi-structured interviews, focused group discussions, observations, students\u27 feedback and reflections were used as data collection tools during the three stages of action research. It took eleven weeks to carry out this study. Findings revealed that by enabling student leaders to communicate effectively and by providing them opportunities to take part in decision making their performance has improved their targeted leadership skills. Furthermore, equipping student leaders to reflect on their practices has also been found helpful in developing collaboration and problem solving skills in them. Consequently, they started executing their leadership tasks effectively. Therefore it is suggested that increasing students\u27 voice could enhance execution of different leadership tasks at higher secondary level