Connecting social class and leadership learning through intersectionality

Abstract

In this chapter, intersectionality is used as an analytic tool to examine the connections between social class and leadership learning. We emphasize leadership identity, capacity, and efficacy and identify strategies that educators may use to center social class by incorporating intersectionality within culturally relevant leadership learning.

Social identities and leadership identity development

“…For example, Turman et al (2018) called for reimagined pathways toward leadership efficacy that are attentive to social location. Additionally, Bitton and Jones (2021) highlighted the need for a consciousness of social class in the context of leadership education.…”

Leadership identity development

“…The continuous process of leadership identity development and enactment is guided by individual, internal self‐awareness (Bitton & Jones, 2021; Guthrie et al., 2013). However, social identities and social location influence leadership identity development given “lived experience, social identities, ideologies, context, and power” (Turman et al., 2018, p. 65).…”

“…As demonstrated here, more distinct and complex analyses regarding leadership identity, capacity, efficacy, and enactment are critical in connecting social identities to social locations. Such an analysis shifts the focus from particular social identities to the ways that students develop and are treated within systems of power in the context of leadership learning (Bitton & Jones, 2021). Leadership educators should not only consider intersectionality as a framework for leadership identity formation, but also consider its implications as an analytical tool to question a matrix of domination and oppression (Collins, 2019) in order to disrupt dominant leadership norms that are based on “white capitalist cis‐heteropatriarchy” (Mahoney, 2017, p. 58).…”