Leadership skills through Mixed Age Programming

While children have access to social engagement with their peers at school and extracurricular programming, it is rare that they interact in a mixed age group. However, it has been seen that mixed age play can promote a growth in social competence. Much of the former research on this topic is focused on the benefits that mixed age groupings have on younger children. It was my goal to delineate the benefits that mixed age groupings could have on older children and specifically on the growth of their leadership skills. This project aims to understand the benefits mixed age programming has on the creation of leadership skills and social competence. Moreover, it was my intention to study the ways in which the creation of leadership or authority in children may have an impact on the social-cognitive development of the participants of mixed age programs. In order to conduct this research, I observed a two hour after school program with children ages eighteen months to five years old over a three month period. I looked for evidence of teaching and nurturing behavior, verbal accommodations and conflict resolution in the behavior of older students. I also interviewed the parents of these students to understand any modifying factors these children may have in their environment. Finally, I interviewed teachers from this program and others in the area in order to broaden the scope of the project to differently structured programs and understand teacher perspectives. From this research, I found that mixed age programming allows for a range of capacities of children which lets them grow socially at their own pace. I also found that mixed age groupings allow older children the opportunity to grow in their leadership skills and fosters social gain in this way.