The impact of a student organization (OSIS) on leadership identity development (LID)

Abstract

Leadership is an important issue in education field and it needs to be taught as early as possible to students. However, the wide context of leadership today has led us to a broader view which understands that leadership is also a part of identity and it is developed overtime. One way to develop it is by involvement in student organizations. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to understand the impact of a student organization in a leadership identity development of students who were involved in a student organization, as well as determining at what stage of LID student leaders were. This study was performed in three Sukma Bangsa Schools by gathering data from 15 student leaders who become the leaders in the student organization, called OSIS. By using a qualitative method, the researchers applied structured interviews to collect the data, using the traditional methods of constant comparative analysis to analyze the data afterwards. The main finding of the research indicated that the student organization, in this case OSIS, helped student leaders to create and improve their leadership skills. Moreover, based on LID theory, not all of the student leaders reached the final stage of LID itself. In addition, this research also presents the reflections of student leaders regarding their experience in OSIS as their student organization at school level. In the end of our thesis implication of the researches and recommendations for future research are also offered.