Chapter 4: Anti-Racism in Leadership Education Research

Despite researchers using social justice and multiculturalism as research paradigms in leadership education research, these theoretical and methodological concepts are sometimes depoliticized or diluted, resulting in racism and other inequalities going unchecked. Racism and white dominance continue to shape the design and delivery of leadership education research (Irwin, 2021). According to Chunoo et al. (2020), “efforts to revolutionize leadership education research” must begin by “examining embedded and unacknowledged Whiteness, patriarchy, and other imbalanced social processes which devalue leadership styles and talents possessed by marginalized communities, pacify cries for true equity, establish inadequate diversity initiatives, and perpetuate racism” (p. 47). For this reason, we argue for reconceptualizing leadership education research using an anti-racist research paradigm to address racism at every level, including curriculum design, pedagogical approach, and student learning and development.