Leadership Toolkit

Assessing students' awareness and development of leadership

1. Reflective journals
2. Reflective essays
3. Analytical essays
4. Case studies
5. Media, film and fiction
6. Current affairs
7. Group presentations
8. Role plays

Case studies

These two assignments will develop students' higher order skills as they draw on analysis and critical evaluation, written communication, creativity, ethical behaviour and teamwork.

• You could get your students to build on their reflective journals by editing them and turning them into fictitious case studies, provided you give them adequate guidance on how to do it.  While this would give their reflective writing a definite purpose, it is a risky operation and one that should be handled with care and sensitivity (see Penn State University's Using Case Studies in Teaching: Case studies).
• Alternatively, allocate students into small groups. Stress how important it is that they are willing to share enough information to reveal, without feeling threatened, the kinds of issues they experienced as leaders and the kinds of things they learned.  If they can't bring themselves to do this, suggest they draw on recent media coverage of a controversial leadership issue with an ethical dilemma facing the leader. They will also need to provide the context in which this happened.
  Then get them to choose one version (or else develop a composite using multiple versions), that has scope for development into a case study.  They will need to choose or develop one that lends itself to being worked on in a team or in pairs.  Suggest that there should be an ethical or moral dilemma at its core so that there will be the potential for ambiguity and complexity in the case study.

Guidance on developing case studies is given in the Penn State University's section on Case studies.

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