Preparing School Leaders to Advocate for Social Justice: A Case Analysis of Social Justice Tenets in a Leadership Preparation Program

School leadership preparation for social justice is a pressing concern in an era of achievement gaps and a rapidly increasing population of largely marginalized students: English learners. This case study explored how one university leadership preparation program infused social justice tenets into the training. Following a qualitative methodology, data collection focused on documents, interviews, and class observations. In recent years, critical race theory (CRT) has garnered much attention in education scholarship as a way to examine racialized practices and social injustices that persist in U.S. schooling. This study used CRT as a basis for the theoretical framework and interpretive lens to engage the instructors in reflecting on how the university program prepared future leaders to advocate for social justice. Results indicate that topics involving race and social justice occurred through various instructional practices on both surface and generic levels. Implications include the call for preparation program instructors to incorporate more direct opportunities to confront issues of marginalization. This study adds to the small body of literature connecting social justice leadership preparation to race and English learners