An engineering student leadership development model for 21st century engineering: Using sociocultural theory to inform practice

To meet the demand for increased engagement of diverse engineers who possess 21
^st
century skills, a leadership program was established in 2011 at a majority Hispanic four-year institution with an aim to develop engineers who work effectively with others in both public and private sectors through ideating, innovating, and thinking holistically through a systems approach to engineering problem solving. Designers of the program drew on leadership theory combined with situated learning theory to design and develop the program. Two theories of leadership informed our blended design: the relational model of leadership and the distributive actions theory of leadership. Situated learning theory, a sociocultural theory of learning, informed the programmatic implementation emphasizing learners' participation in authentic activities and the social relations in which they are embedded. Integral to the development of the leadership program model was a mixed methods research design to investigate its efficacy in relation to student development, which was structured in part to emphasize awareness and self-realization of various leadership skills. Qualitative research findings show that students associate their participation in situated learning activities of the leadership program with greater initiative and efficacy in their engineering classes. These findings corroborated the findings of the quantitative study.