THE FUNCTION OF THE INSTRUCTIONAL TOOLS ON STUDENTS’ DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT: AN EXPLORATORY RESEARCH IN ITALIAN ACADEMIC CONTEXT

Students’ active involvement in formative process is a key theme in the international scientific debate (Grion & Cook-Sather, 2013; Ghislandi & Raffaghelli, 2014). In the instructional designing, teachers are called upon to set up educational environments in which leadership is distributed (Spillane, 2005; Fenwick & Landri, 2012) and in which students’ autonomy in study is encouraged.

This paper focuses on the function that some instructional tools could have on the development of Students’ Distributed Leadership in the academic context (Dugan & Komives, 2007; Seemiller, 2013). Data presented in this paper come from an exploratory research conducted at Department of Education of Roma Tre University. This research used a mixed-method approach (Creswell, 2013) and the sample group involved 201 students.

The hypothesis of the research is that the use of instructional tools that enhance dialogue, self-evaluation, collaboration and role playing can foster in students a cognitive and metacognitive growth and an increase of the motivation in studying (Cornoldi, 1995; Boscolo, 1999).
This paper examines, in particular, students' perceptions about the effectiveness of the tools used in the instructional design on the development of distributed leadership. These perceptions are measured using a questionnaire in which students are asked to write their level of agreement or disagreement (5-point likert scale) with some statements on the basis of their academic experience.

Data analysis shows that undergraduate students believe that the instructional tools used in the research could be a strategic resource for teaching and for the development of distributed leadership, with particular reference to the tools “dialogical lessons” and “group activities”.