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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1488270
Students' Perceptions of Schools' Influence on the Leadership Self-Efficacy of Adolescent Girls: Religious and Secular Post-Primary Schools in Israel
Provisionally accepted- Ariel University, Ariel, Israel
The aim of this study is to evaluate the perceived effect post-primary school has on female teenagers' leadership self-efficacy according to their own perceptions. The study employs social cognitive theory and focuses on the teenagers' personal social experiences and perceptions regarding the way leadership is taught in their schools. The research is based on 26 in-depth interviews among teenage girls attending middle and high schools in the public education system in Israel. The teenage girls attend secular state education schools and religious all-girl state education schools (Ulpana). The findings indicate four major ways in which self-efficacy can be developed. The religious all-girl schools seem to promote leadership self-efficacy more effectively than secular mixed-gender schools, primarily by mastering leadership experiences, social modeling, and social persuasion of leadership ability.
Keywords: Leadership development, teenage girls, Post-primary school, self-efficacy, case study
Received: 29 Aug 2024; Accepted: 25 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Perets, Davidovitch and Lewin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Eyal Lewin, Ariel University, Ariel, Israel
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