Intersectionality and Leading Social Change in Education: Professional Learning to Transform Self, Others, and the Field

This book explores a social change and transformational approach to leadership. As educational leaders are increasingly serving a changing demographic of students and also address persistent challenges and heightened tension around race and equity, it is becoming necessary for educators to approach leadership in new and radical ways.

Designed for aspiring and current leaders, this book highlights stories of courageous educational leaders with intersectional identities who interrogate and reflect on how their intersectionality shaped their leadership. In turn, these stories help readers explore how lived experiences and deeply held values can shape and inform their own leadership. Chapters conclude with a reader’s guide, prompting reflection upon the nuances of each leader’s journey, and thus, facilitating the discourse of marginalized experiences in educational leadership.

This new approach to professional learning helps today’s aspiring principals, aspiring superintendents, and practicing administrators learn how intersectional leadership can help them navigate multiple marginalized spaces and codify new notions of power and success. This volume generates a collection of compelling counter narratives that the field needs to hear.

Winner of “Society of Professors of Education 2025 Outstanding Book Award Honorable Mention”

Aubrey H. Wang is an award-winning Professor of Education Leadership at Saint Joseph’s University, USA.

Margaret Grogan is Professor Emerita of Education Leadership at Chapman University, USA.