Implementing leadership skills in students through art

The research explores the perceptions of students at various educational stages and their teachers regarding the effectiveness of a disruptive didactic innovation to implement communication and leadership skills through an art-based experience. A teaching experiment applied to 30 students from different educational levels was chosen as methodology, with a convergent mixed methods design of exploratory and descriptive nature, including a final integration phase to compare the results between the methodological streams. Specifically, a discourse analysis and a Likert scale survey were used. The results demonstrate the positive impact of the didactic innovation on the development of specific skills in Secondary education, High school and university students. All students have successfully implemented leadership, critical thinking, learning, creativity, resilience, and problem-solving skills. The study concludes that an experiential communication with art serves as a powerful tool to promote cross-cutting skills in a diverse educational setting, and that the experience is positively valued by both students and their teachers.