Children’s Emergent Leadership: The Relationships with Group Characteristics and Outcomes

This study is focused on the relationships that children’s self-perceived emergent leadership shares with group characteristics, such as gender and ability groups, and with outcomes, such as performance and self-perceived group cohesion and regulation. Fourth-and fifthgrade students (N = 249) participated in a collaborative math activity, assessing their own leadership behaviors and perceptions of group cohesion and regulation. Utilizing hierarchical linear modeling, task- and relationship-focused leadership were positively associated with group regulation and group cohesion but were not related to group performance. Selfperceived task-focused emergent leadership was negatively associatedwith female-majority group compositions. Classroom implications are discussed.