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The health workforce of the 21st century has enormous challenges; health professionals need to be both experts in their field and equipped with leadership and managerial skills. These skills are not part of the regular curriculum, so specific programs bridging this gap are required. Since 2001, FAIMER®, with eight centers across the globe, has worked to create health professions education leaders through transformational learning experiences, developing a global community of practice encompassing over 40 countries. We describe the design, implementation, evaluation, and evolution of the leadership and management curriculum component of the global Institute over 15 years. The curriculum is developed and updated through practices that keep faculty and fellows connected, aligned, and learning together. The article highlights the unique features, challenges faced, and sustainability issues. With a robust mixed methods evaluation, there are substantial reasons to believe that the model works, is adaptable and replicable to meet local needs. The program is playing an important role of answering the call for training positive, strengths-based, collaborative leaders who are socially accountable and embrace the challenges for high quality equitable health care around the globe

Educators must develop leadership studies programs that prepare students to deal with the reality of a diverse world so they are able to handle constant change as they lead in the 21^st century. The purpose of this paper is to consider a variety of questions that need to be answered when developing core curricula for college and university leadership studies programs. The discussion is based many years of researching, developing, and teaching in this area at state universities as well as at private liberal arts and Christian colleges. This paper offers a review of the importance of leadership education, a review of Hosford’s (1973) curriculum development model, and an examination of three case histories. Hosford (1973) has developed a model of instructional design that suggests a strong interrelationship exists between any given curriculum program and the subsequent teaching involved in the program. Hosford’s model challenges the educator to ask a variety of questions concerning issues affecting professional, practical, political, package (i.e., program), organizational, interrelated dynamics, teaching/learning, and implementation. As illustrated by the three case histories, with attention to each dimension of curriculum development it is possible to develop meaningful and successful leadership studies courses and programs at the college and university levels.

This research assesses the Know, See, Plan, portions of the Know, See, Plan, Do (KSPD) model for curriculum design in leadership education. There were 3 graduate student groups, each taught using 1 of 3 different curriculum designs (KSPD and 2 control groups). Based on apre- test, post-test design, students’ performance was measured to assess their knowledge, and application skills of the course material. Results indicated MBA students taught based on a KSPD curriculum (Group 1) performed significantly better than students in the two control groups on 3 post-test dependent measures designed to capture the effectiveness of the Know, See, Plan curriculum design model, (basic leadership information (K1), recognition of leadership concepts in practice (S1), and developing a plan of action (P1)). Group 1 also performed significantly better on all 3 post-test measures than they performed on the 3 pre-test measures. The non-MBA control group (Group 2) improved significantly from pre-test to post test on P1 but not on S1 or K1. The MBA control group (Group 3) had no significant changes in performance from pre-test to post-test on any of the three dependent measures. These findings are discussed in terms of their support for the KSPD model and in regard to limitations of this study.

The history of academic inquiry into leadership as a discipline has yielded the unintended consequence of compounding confusion and perpetuating the myth of leadership as mystical. This paper takes that acknowledgement and inquires into the past and future of leadership theory development from a systemic perspective to define the concept, propose an initial framework in which literature and inquiry may be framed, and offer a curriculum for leader(ship) training and development. Three aspects are proposed – requisite, fantasy, and requisite fantasy. This paper suggests the latter is the most appropriate and defines leadership as a binding strange attractor to social patterns. Upon this definition, this paper proposes an initial framework of six elements and six relationships for assimilating and re-organizing the literature, prescriptions, and speculations surrounding the discipline. Lastly, this framework serves to propose a curriculum for advancing the practice of leadership through training, development, and education.

With a growing number of leadership programs in universities and colleges in North America, leadership educators and researchers are engaged in a wide ranging dialogue to propose clear processes, content, and designs for providing academic leadership education. This research analyzes the curriculum design of 52 institutions offering a “Minor in Leadership” (13 institutions) or a “Minor in Leadership Studies” (39 institutions) in the United States to evaluate their commonalities and differences using the Brungardt, Greenleaf, Brungardt, and Arensdorf (2006) courses classification model. The results show a large variety of curricular designs with emerging trends. While we recognize the need for flexibility and innovation in program design, in this paper we also argue for greater harmonization of academic leadership program designs.

The challenges of the 21st century, post-industrial society are increasingly complex. They will not be solved by the actions of individual, “heroic” leaders; instead, they require the participation of diverse stakeholders in order to make progress. Through a discussion of the evolution of leadership theory, we demonstrate that theories emerging from a post-industrial paradigm highlight the collective dimensions of leadership in contrast to the leader-centric theories of the Industrial Era. We draw from this literature to problematize the leader-centric nature of community leadership programs in the United States by specifically examining their sponsorship, content, and structure. Finally, we offer a vision for how to re-imagine community leadership programs so that they are more responsive to the complexity of the 21st century by drawing upon collective leadership and postmodern curriculum theory.

This article summarizes the design, implementation, and current status of an undergraduate interdisciplinary leadership studies minor at Morehouse College. The college’s primary mission is to “develop men with disciplined minds who will lead lives of leadership, service, and self-realization,” as well as provide students with an understanding of the African American heritage and cultural experience. The leadership studies minor was designed as a place within the academic curriculum of the college program for students to learn about and reflect upon the study, practice, and interdisciplinary nature of leadership, its theoretical and historical foundations, and explore critical ethical leadership challenges that impact civil society with special emphasis on issues as they relate to African Americans, their heritage, and their cultural experience. Program results to date and the future of the minor in the college’s academic curriculum are also discussed.

Individuals expected to offer leadership are often chosen based on their power position within the field of interest and specialization in the context area being addressed and not on their leadership style. Leadership education curriculum often focuses on change as a product of leadership and leadership styles but places little emphasis on how the leadership styles of those chosen to lead change can influence the change process. In order to inform the development of curriculum targeting this aspect of leadership, research needs to be done to determine if leadership style impacts level of engagement in change. This research examined how transformational and transactional leadership styles impacted engagement in a national change process when 39 department chairs of universities across the United States were selected by the National Science Foundation to lead science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) educational reform at the undergraduate level. The findings revealed transformational leadership style positively predicted engagement in change and transactional leadership style negatively predicted engagement in change. While the small sample size makes the findings exploratory in nature and should be used with caution, they imply leadership education curriculum should include lessons on the impact these two styles have on engagement in change since there were statistically significant differences.

We examined a large multi-year undergraduate leadership development program (LDP) across seven universities and used an integrated framework of transformational leadership and situational judgment tests (SJTs) during a critical and formative period of leadership development. This study was the first to show a significant relationship between experience and transformational leadership style in students in an undergraduate LDP using SJTs and the multifactor leadership questionnaire (MLQ). The results showed that greater experience was positively related to increased transformational leadership style and that high overall decision scores were indicated in all groups of students with varying leadership styles and varying experience levels and decision abilities. The study findings and implications are discussed, along with recommendations for leadership educators to develop decision quality in LDPs.

Providing leadership education for young men growing up without their father, through a structured curriculum and mentoring program, should enhance their development. To examine this, the authors interviewed adult alumni who participated as adolescents in a cohort-based, sixmonth leadership program. Interviews outlined several key themes: once served by others the young men desired to serve their community, choosing an authentic leadership educator matters, program mentors inspired positive life changes, and the learned leadership lessons transcended the setting and the curriculum. This qualitative project examined the efficacy of a youth leadership development program by interviewing past participants. This research outlined how service to others can inspire more service and that leadership education has the potential to alter lives, and in this case, even save lives.