Abstract:
This study examined the identity development of adolescents who attend a leadership development summer camp called BLAST. James Marcia's (1966) adolescent identity status paradigms can be a reflection in these experiences. The conceptual framework included these reflections along with theories and research findings about adolescent identity development. In both of these areas, I found lack of research.
Robert Stake's (2006) protocols and guidelines for collective case study research were the methods I relied on for this study. For this study, I proposed two research questions: (1) how do adolescent participants describe their personal leadership development experiences at BLAST and (2) how do participants perceive the BLAST experience impacted their identity development? To answer these questions, I conducted semi-structured interviews of the participants and analyzed camp documents. Relying on In Vivo, values, and process coding along with direct interpretation, I analyzed these data to answer the research questions to understand how the participants of this leadership development camp experience identity development.
From the analysis, some ideas were found. First, adolescents described their leadership development experience as a collaborative experience full of engaging and collaborative activities that improved their leadership abilities, namely communication skills. Secondly, the participants of this study acknowledged how they became more outgoing. Also, upon self-reflection of the overall experience, the participants all indicated some ideas that indicated positive identity development as defined by the theoretical framework.