Empowering your students: A Canvas for Cultivating Student Self-Leadership
Today’s students need more than knowledge. They need to navigate complexity, lead themselves through uncertainty, and keep learning beyond university. That calls for inner competencies like resilience, reflection, and self-leadership.
Global initiatives like the OECD’s “Future of Education and Skills 2030” and theInner Development Goals(IDG) Framework emphasize the need for student agency, self-regulation, and purpose-driven learning. But how do we bring this into our teaching?
The Canvas: A Practical Starting Point
The Self-Leadership Canvas is a tool to help educators integrate inner development and student self-leadership into their curriculum—without having to reinvent everything. It’s designed to spark reflection, unlock possibilities, and build on what already exists.
Developed in collaboration with Nova van Schijndel, Matty de Jong, Lotte Kuijstermans and Casimir Meulendijks ** ** fromBreda University of Applied Sciences, the canvas supports educators in aligning their teaching with what students truly need to thrive.
Walking Through the Canvas: Five Key Dimensions
Each section is guided by reflection questions and begins with a short explanation of why it matters.
Purpose (Why)
Clear purpose anchors your design. It reminds you why self-leadership belongs in your teaching and helps your students understand as well.
- What do I believe students truly need to thrive in today’s world?
- How does self-leadership support the kind of graduates I want to shape?
Impact (What)
Before measuring outcomes, we need to define the kind of impact we want to create. This section helps clarify what success looks like for you and your students.
- What competencies do my students need to learn to be able to lead themselves
- How will self-leadership contribute to student success and retention?
Student Engagement, Curriculum & Resources (How)
Good intentions need structure. This section helps you think through the practicalities.
- How do I make reflection and self-leadership feel relevant and empowering
- What formats work best?
- What scaffolding (time, feedback, examples) do students need?
- Where in my current curriculum could it naturally integrate?
- What role do faculty, advisors and mentors play?
- How can co-curricular initiatives support this effort?
- What tools (digital or analog), time or internal expertise are available?
- How much capacity & money would I need to implement that?
Opportunities & Challenges
Change comes with resistance and risk—but also opens new doors. This section invites you to anticipate both.
- What new possibilities open up?
- How can this enhance my own teaching or research?
- What could get in the way?
- What student resistance or misunderstanding might I encounter? How could it be addressed?
- What mindset shifts are needed from me or my colleagues?
Sustainability
For self-leadership to stick, it must be measured and embedded in the culture and systems of education.
- What indicators will assess the impact?
- How can student progress in self-leadership be tracked?
- How can I involve students in assessing the impact?
- What would help me embed this meaningfully over time?
- How can self-leadership become an ongoing part of university life?
- How can best practices be shared within and beyond the institution?
Starting Small: Tips for Getting Started
Change doesn’t have to be big to be meaningful. Here are simple entry points:
- Add a short reflection question at the end of a lecture.
- Invite a colleague to co-reflect using the canvas.
- Pilot one question from the canvas in a course planning session.
- Use student feedback to co-design self-leadership components.
If we want students to become self-directed, resilient, and compassionate changemakers, we need to start with the way we teach. The Self-Leadership Canvas is a starting point for conversation, creativity, and courageous redesign.
Reach out to the Rflect team to get support to integrate self-leadership & inner development and make it scalable with the support of technology.
You can download the canvas here or reach out if you’d like support using it in your context. Let’s build educational experiences that shape not only careers, but lives.
