Neither Camper Nor Staff: Understanding Counselor-in-Training Programs

Attending summer camp can be a developmentally enriching experience for both campers and camp staff. However, many camps offer programming that is situated between the camper and counselor roles, namely counselor-in-training (CIT) programs. While CIT programs are common, there is a lack of research documenting the form, function, and outcomes of participation in them. Consequently, the purpose of this study was to understand the nature and benefits of camp-based adolescent leadership programs. To inform this purpose, we surveyed CIT program directors and asked them to describe various aspects of their programs. We also collected primary data directly from CIT participants so that we could include participants’ perspectives in our study. Results indicated that CITs gained a variety of social and emotional skills from their CIT experience. These findings are discussed and implications for practitioners are proposed.

How Military Schools Reconcile Compliance, Authority, and Authenticity in Adolescent Leadership

Adults and adolescents are different, as are adolescent girls and teenage boys, but it is unclear if or how these differences impact their ideas about leadership. Adults prioritize compliance, obedience, and conformity, while adolescents advocate autonomy, independence, and ingenuity. Adolescent girls prefer a relational, inclusive, collaborative leadership style with a spiritual generative culture that values consensus, while teenage boys prefer an action-oriented and hierarchical leadership style with an empowered dynamic culture that rewards initiative and innovation. Authentic leadership is effective at accommodating the expectations and needs of adults, adolescent girls, and teenage boys, and it generates its own unique empowered generative culture that benefits all constituencies. Military school objectives, adolescents' preferred leadership characteristics, and authentic leadership are quite congruent with one another, and this potent combination makes military schools particularly effective in their main purpose of developing effective authentic adolescent leaders.

Adolescent leadership development through participation in a robotics design challenge experience

This research study explored the adolescent leadership development experiences within teams participating in the Robotics Design Challenge sponsored by the University of Missouri Engineering Department. Since the design challenge was not a leadership development program, this research explored whether or not leadership development occurred. The first research question was whether leadership development experiences emerged. The second question took a constructivist and situational view of how the adolescents experience leadership development. The third research question examined roles of the adult mentors that fostered leadership development. The final question explored the adult-mentors' descriptions of the resulting leadership development experiences. Two sites, seven teams, and twenty-eight adolescents, ages 10 through 12, were observed during team meetings and participated in focus groups. The environment included authentic opportunity, mentor access, amount of challenge, variety of tasks, and quality and acceptance of feedback. The adolescents exhibited leadership traits and behaviors such as confidence, knowledge, teamwork, and problem solving. The adultmentors provided valuable structure and feedback. The adults reflected on the level of difficulty as being important to developing leadership and described several adolescents who exhibited leadership traits and behaviors. The robotics design challenge provided an environment in which adolescents could develop leadership skills. Providing similar opportunities to additional adolescents and incorporating leadership evelopment into those activities could be beneficial to the overall development of the adolescents.