Postsecondary leadership experiences provide students opportunities to gain, enhance, and refine capacities useful in addressing the complex challenges of the world. Our exploratory, descriptive qualitative study examined the motivations of postsecondary students to engage in long-term curricular leadership education (CLE) programs. Interviews and focus groups from 29 participants identified expected outcomes, program characteristics, and social encouragement to be three primary motivators that interact to describe student engagement in CLE programs. This formed a basis for our initial conceptualization of curricular leadership education motivation of postsecondary students. Our findings serve as a foundation to explore postsecondary student motivation to enhance the practice and scholarship of leadership education. We offer a conceptual model illustrating our results as well as recommendations for practice and research.
Exploring Student Motivations to Engage in Curricular Leadership Education