Establishing a dynamic understanding of factors that influence university students’ leadership approaches, perceptions, and skills through a systematic literature review

Abstract

Leadership skills are an important area of students’ development and a key learning outcome of their university education. This systematic review aims to identify, summarise, and map out the various factors that influence university students’ leadership approaches, perceptions, and beliefs, in order to establish a more comprehensive understanding of how development in these areas can be better targeted and nurtured. Drawing on 54 empirical journal articles identified in the search stage, two main themes were identified: student-centric attributes, and environmental and contextual elements. Ranging from students’ internal self-beliefs to their immediate social situations and wider sociocultural conventions, findings from this review reveal a dynamic set of different factors that interact with one another. The findings of this review raise important implications for efforts targeting students’ leadership skills development, including the need to cultivate students’ sense of leadership self-efficacy and raise awareness of harmful social stereotypes.