In today's rapidly evolving educational landscape, student leadership learning is at a critical point. Higher education institutions (among others) are being asked to prepare students not only for careers, but for lives filled with complexity, ambiguity, and constant change. Correspondingly, the landscape of leadership education is undergoing a significant paradigm shift, transitioning from traditional individual-centric models to relational, practice-based, and socially conscious frameworks. This editorial synthesizes critical insights from the scholarship at hand and across various domains, including veterinary medicine, youth development (4-H), and digital technology, to outline the evolving state of the field. The expectations placed on institutions to deliver on civic purpose, and on the students attending these institutions, continue to become more complex in response to global uncertainty, technological advancements, and shifting social landscapes. Within this intensely evolving context, student leadership learning is more important than ever. However, leadership learning needs to be reimagined. It is through leadership education that students develop the capacity to lead, follow, and engage in the leadership process, as well as skills in interpreting, understanding, adapting, and contributing to complex contexts. We, as leadership educators, are uniquely positioned in this moment. Although the work of preparing students for leadership has always required attention to change, the pace and magnitude of current shifts demand imagination and renewal with intention. Expanding leadership learning from competencies, centering context, increased attention to student well-being, and the integration of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, all denote the need for reimagining leadership learning. As the nature of work, technology, and society continues to shift, so too must our approaches to leadership education. What we need to pay attention to is moving beyond fixed definitions of leadership education to approaching leadership learning that emphasizes holistic development, attention to context, and adaptability from the use of technology and gathering of information. What is emerging across scholarship and practice is not a singular model, but a set of guiding directions. These directions invite us to move beyond static definitions of leadership toward approaches that emphasize development, reflection, context, and holistic learning. In doing so, they challenge the field to consider not only what leadership learning is, but what it must become in order to remain relevant and impactful. This issue of New Directions for Student Leadership focuses on the reimagining of leadership learning, especially in a time of uncertainty and transformation. Article authors in this issue discuss the need for identity, capacity, and efficacy in leadership learning, the importance of various contexts, integrating well-being into leadership learning, and emerging technologies and the validation of information. Collectively, this issue gives leadership educators kindling to reimagine leadership education for an uncertain and transforming world. One of the most important demands of student leadership learning is refocusing our educational objectives. Leadership education has historically emphasized the development of specific competencies such as communication, teamwork, and decision-making, which can be observed and assessed (Seemiller 2013). While these remain important, the achievement of competencies alone is not sufficient in producing capable leaders. To meet today's (and tomorrow's) demands, students must holistically prepare themselves through identity development; be prepared to navigate complexity, adapt to changing environments, and derive meaning from uncertainty through a broader definition of capacity, as well as a development of self-efficacy to be able to enact their knowledge and skills in various contexts. Leadership learning, necessarily, must move beyond focusing on what students know and can do, toward how they learn, adapt, and respond over time. Such a shift calls us to reconsider how we define success in leadership education. Effective leadership is both the demonstration of skills and the capacity to engage complexity, to remain adaptable, and to contribute meaningfully to the lives of others. This refocusing reflects leadership learning as process-oriented and developmental in leadership identity, capacity, and efficacy (Guthrie et al. 2021). In this issue, the importance of identity in leadership development is explored. Hannah Sunderman, Kate McCain, Jonathan Orsini, Tori Pedersen, Ethan Carlson, and Grant Holst, in A Narrative Inquiry of Meaning Making and Leader Identity Development Among College Students, explore leader identity development and meaning making and share how personal development outcomes through meaning making opportunities emerge. In Leadership Identity Development: Insights into the Lived Experiences of Undergraduate Business Students on a Placement Year, Di Pede and Turner explore how pre- and early-career experiences affect undergraduate business students in the UK and their leadership identity development over time. Also, Armani Jones highlights how traditional leadership pathways often privilege dominant cultures and proposes an asset-based model for redesigning leadership selection, development, and assessment to create more equitable student leadership pathways in his article, Hidden Strengths, Visible Inequities: Rethinking Who Gets to Lead. Another important factor to consider is context. Leadership does not occur in isolation; it is shaped by the contexts in which it is practiced. As Guthrie and Devies (2024) discussed, the process of leadership always has three components: leaders, followers, and the context in which it is practiced. However, context is often overlooked, even though it is complex, layered, and constantly changing. Devies and Guthrie (2026) discussed how understanding context was important for leadership, and developing skills to do so was essential in leadership learning. Deconstructing contexts through looking at various aspects, including social, historical, attitudinal, personal, and environment could help sharpen leadership capacity and efficacy. Recognizing the importance of context requires a shift in how leadership is taught. Rather than presenting leadership as one set of principles, educators must help students understand how leadership is enacted differently across situations and communities. Additionally, situating leadership learning in various contexts is as critical in amplifying the importance of understanding context, which is also explored in this issue. Centering the context of community engagement, Francesca Lo shares a way to assess the influence of learning in this specific context from a mixed methods study in the article Using ePortfolios to Assess the Influence of Community Engagement on Undergraduates’ Socially Responsible Leadership Development. In the current context of anti-DEI, leadership programs situated in critical and equity-centered frameworks have to consider policy, as well as the needs of students. Ericka Roland and Erica Wiborg offer considerations of active waiting to support leadership educators working within contested institutional environments in their article, Practice of Active Waiting: Leadership Education Curricula in Uncertain Times. In Israel Ovedare and Eric Kaufman's, Developing Youth's Capacity to Lead Through Complexities: Exploring 4-H Extension Agents’ Perception on Barriers and Opportunities, youth leadership development through 4-H extension programs is explored. The context of 4-H influences youth across the country and beyond and is an important context to consider. Another context explored in this issue is leadership learning in a professional graduate veterinary program. In Collaborative Leadership Learning Groups in Veterinary Graduate Education: A Practice-Based Approach to Leadership Development Through Shelter Operations Consultation, Ron Orchard, Brooke Davis, and Brandon Kliewer describe the integration of collaborative leadership learning groups into a graduate veterinary course on shelter operations consultation at Kansas State University using leadership-as-practice development frameworks and offer practical implications of this process. Freddy Juarez and Brittany Devies share a different perspective on leadership learning by focusing on sorority membership and alcohol use. In The Sisterhood Paradox: Leadership Learning, Thriving, and Risk in Sorority Communities, they argue that fraternity and sorority membership is one of the most significant co-curricular contexts for undergraduate leadership learning, and where students actively construct leadership identity, develop interpersonal capacity, and practice collective leadership in real-time organizational environments. Their empirical investigation attempts to improve what we know about the impact of relational contexts on leadership learning. As is plainly clear, the experiences offered in each of these contexts explored in this issue are rich for learning, not only for students, but also for leadership educators in expanding our idea of where leadership learning opportunities can be offered. Each of these contexts provides the space and experience for students to test ideas, encounter complexity, and develop a more nuanced understanding of leadership. As the leadership education field continues to evolve, there is also a growing recognition of how leadership learning must attend to the whole student. Leadership is not only a cognitive or behavioral undertaking; rather, it is connected to how students experience themselves and their relationships with others. Integrating well-being into leadership learning is particularly important in this current moment of uncertainty and transformation. Students are navigating increasing levels of stress, ambiguity, and complexity. Leadership education has the opportunity to provide not only identity, capacity, and efficacy development but also support for navigating current realities in meaningful ways. Well-being should not be an afterthought but embedded within the design and delivery of leadership learning opportunities. In this issue, Kathy Guthrie and Charlie Panarella offer ten aspects of thriving and leadership while aligning them with the International Leadership Association's General Principles of Leadership Programs (International Leadership Association 2026). In their article, Unseen Architecture: General Principles in Framing Thriving as Leadership Learning, they offer implications for designing programs to advance both leadership capacity and holistic well-being. Deepening the conversation of thriving and leadership, Charlie Panarella and Kathy Guthrie explore various pedagogical strategies of thriving and leadership using the leadership learning framework. Specific strategies are offered in their article Integrating Thriving into Leadership Learning: A Framework-Aligned Approach to Pedagogy. Integrating thriving as a well-being concept into leadership learning opportunities is critical for reimagining leadership learning in times of uncertainty and transformation. The fourth area explored in this issue is the integration of emerging technological tools and validating information. Vivechkanand Chunoo's Leading in the (Mis)information Age: Digital Media Literacy as Essential Leadership Learning advances digital media literacy as a core leadership competency and offers a framework for integrating it into undergraduate leadership education. Drawing on scholarship from media literacy, civic education, and information science, he outlines practical strategies for leadership educators, including teaching credibility evaluation frameworks, using misinformation case studies, facilitating participatory media projects, and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. Revisiting technology and pedagogy include integrating emerging tools such as artificial intelligence in ways that enhance, rather than diminish, human connection and critical thinking. In Student Leadership Development in a Gen-AI Higher Education Landscape: Four Imperatives for the Future, Kris Acheson contends that leadership educators have both an opportunity and a responsibility to engage with these developments proactively rather than reactively. Specifically, four imperatives for integrating AI into leadership education (i.e., pedagogy, competency, transformation, and assessment) are examined to help educators responsibly integrate AI while preparing students for future technology-drive challenges. As we look toward the future of student leadership learning, it becomes increasingly apparent that our field is being called to evolve in thoughtful and intentional ways. Refocusing leadership learning outcomes, recentering context, reviving well-being, and revisiting emerging tools and information represent a need for an evolution in the design and implementation of leadership learning opportunities. This undertaking requires leadership educators to engage in ongoing reflection about their own practice (Beatty and Guthrie 2024). It also calls for a willingness to question enduring assumptions and the dominant narratives (Dugan 2024), to adapt instructional strategies, and to embrace new possibilities, even when they introduce ambiguity and transformation. In many ways, the evolution of leadership education mirrors the very processes we hope to cultivate in students: learning, adapting, and growing in response to changing environments and contexts. At the same time, these shifts reaffirm the continuing value of leadership learning. At its core, leadership education is about preparing students to engage with others, to navigate complexity, and to contribute to the greater and common good. While the contexts where this occurs continue to change and increase in volatility and chaos, our purpose remains constant. By remaining grounded in research and practice, educators can model what it means to engage in change thoughtfully and intentionally. Ultimately, the future of student leadership learning will be shaped by the choices we make now. Through intentional design, critical engagement, and a commitment to holistic student development, leadership education can continue to foster growth, learning, and transformation. In doing so, we not only prepare students to succeed, we also prepare them to reimagine an increasingly complex world.
Guthrie et al. (Thu,) studied this question.