Leadership training for first stage students in primary education

This study includes preparing a program for being able to develop leadership abilities of the first stage students in primary schools, execution of program called as "We are leaders" and its being tested of effectiveness. The training program "We are leaders" aims at raising the students on five fundemental dimensions. These dimensions are basic leadership skills, personal skills, problem solving ability, team work and social service. 24 hours scheduled "We are leaders" education program is comprised for this aim. It was used experimental design with pretest-posttest design control group. Because of convenience sampling approach, Ergenekon Primary School which is dependent on Ministry of National Education and also in which researcher performs his duty in Güngören county in İstanbul was chosen for research. The study was executed with 30 student who continue their education on third class level and 15 of them are in control group and the other 15 of them are experimental group. "We are leaders" circadian training program which each of parts has 40 minutes was executed on experimental group for 5 hours in 1 day. Any kind of study was not executed on control group. Within the scope of study, with the aim of defining the leadership abilities of students, "Leader Student Scale" which is tested in terms of effectualness and credibility and is developed by Tüysüz (2007) was used as data collection tool. According to results of the research, it is observed that the program "We are leaders" which is prepared to develop leadership qualities supports the leadership abilities' progress positively in dimensions of basic leadership skills, personal skills, problem solving ability, team work and social service on the students who take education first stage in primary schools. When it is looked at the students from gender aspect, it is observed that "We are leaders" training program which is given leadership education doesn't influence positively or negatively the students on gender basis. Key words: Leadership, Leadership Training Program, Personal Skills, Problem Solving Ability, Team Work, Social Service