Abstract
Researchers have asserted that offering intentional leadership roles to youth can help them to develop life skills (e.g., communication, decision-making); however, few physical-activity-based positive youth development programs provide youth these intentional leadership roles, and little research has explored the impact of these opportunities on youth who take them up. The purpose of this study was to understand the developmental experiences of youth leaders in a physical-activity-based positive youth development program. Sixteen youth leaders (Mage= 13.37, SD = 1.36) from 4 sites of the Start2Finish Running & Reading Club participated in semi-structured interviews to discuss their experiences as junior coaches. Fertman and van Linden’s (1999) model of youth leadership development was used to guide the data collection and analysis. Through deductive-inductive thematic analysis, 3 themes were constructed: (a) awareness: developing into leaders started with seeing potential through role models, (b) interaction: learning by doing and interacting with others helped youth to practice leadership abilities, and (c) mastery: taking on greater responsibility allowed for opportunities to refine leadership abilities and develop a variety of life skills. These themes helped to bring an understanding to the processes involved in leadership and life-skill development. Practical and research implications are discussed regarding leveraging youth leadership opportunities in youth programming.
Highlights
Physical activity (PA) contexts are popular environments for after-school programming and offer rich atmospheres for the development of life skills
Peer leadership opportunities tend to be more common in traditional sport programs, which are likely to adopt the primary objectives of engaging youth in sport and developing sport-specific skills, while developing leadership may be regarded as a secondary objective (Petitpas, Cornelius, Van Raalte, & Jones, 2005)
An instrumental case study was utilised to understand the phenomenon of youth leadership development within the specific case of a PAPYD program, through capturing the realities constructed directly from those who experienced this phenomenon (Sparkes & Smith, 2013)
Summary
Physical activity (PA) contexts are popular environments for after-school programming and offer rich atmospheres for the development of life skills (e.g., communication, decision-making; Fraser-Thomas, Côté, & Deakin, 2005; Hodge, Danish, Forneris, & Miles, 2016). Little research has examined PA programs that prioritise leadership development and promote intentional youth leadership strategies (Gould & Voelker, 2012) While leadership in these programs involves influencing team members towards achievements, the relationships that leaders adopt with their peers in these programs tend to be hierarchical with an explicit crossage component, where all youth are offered opportunities to adopt adult-like roles in leading, coaching, and mentoring younger youth (e.g., Martinek, Schilling, & Henderson, 2006). Throughout these stages, youth can develop leadership information, attitudes, and skills like communication, decision-making, and stress management (Fertman & van Linden, 1999)
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