Abstract
The article presents the description of an empirical study testing the effectiveness of a program for the development of leadership qualities in 6-7-year-old children in the process of joint activities titled “Everyone can become a leader!”. The structure of the program comprises three blocks: block 1 (cognitive) – “What is leadership and what a leader should be like”, objectives: the formation of children’s knowledge of about leadership, the qualities of a leader, the development of their creative thinking; block 2 (communicative) – “Learning to understand each other and communicate”, objectives: overcoming communication barriers, the development of children’s emotional sphere and communication skills; block 3 (behavioral) – “Learning to organize and manage”, objectives: the formation of children’s skills of organization and management of joint activities with peers. The main method of the study is a pedagogical experiment comprising the forming, the confirmatory, and the control experiment stages. The results of primary diagnostics conducted prior to the beginning of children’s lessons as a part of the program indicate the lack of differences between the experimental and control groups by the level of leadership qualities development. The analysis of the results of secondary diagnostics conducted at the end of the forming experiment stage demonstrated that children’s level of leadership qualities development in the experimental group exceeded the one in the control group. The authors can, therefore, conclude on the positive effect of the program on the development of leadership qualities in 6-7-year-old children and the opportunity of using the program in the educational process of preschool institutions.
Highlights
Children’s leadership is viewed in scientific literature as a socio-psychological phenomenon and a preschool group is examined as the first step of social organization of people where the origins of the leadership phenomenon are found [1]
The goal of the study is to develop a program for the development of leadership qualities in 6-7-year-old children in the process of joint activity with peers and empirically test its effectiveness
The research objectives are to form a set of diagnostic methods for the study of the level of leadership qualities development in 6-7-year-old children, to identify the correlations between the parameters of leadership qualities in order to justify the correctness of their choice, and to analyze the results of the empirical study
Summary
Children’s leadership is viewed in scientific literature as a socio-psychological phenomenon and a preschool group is examined as the first step of social organization of people where the origins of the leadership phenomenon are found [1]. Leadership manifests in a child having a set of personal qualities allowing them to be an informal leader in a group of peers: to execute leading roles in games, manage children’s activities, influence their behavior, etc. The guidance of a teacher in various types of joint activities of children allows to overcome the egocentrism characteristic of preschoolers, to help every child to manifest and develop leadership qualities and form behavior strategies oriented towards cooperation and achieving common goals [5]. The goal of the study is to develop a program for the development of leadership qualities in 6-7-year-old children in the process of joint activity with peers and empirically test its effectiveness.
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