Transforming Educational Leadership: Non-Traditional Narratives to Promote Equity in Uncertain Times
Book
Kundu, A. (2025). Transforming Educational Leadership: Non-Traditional Narratives to Promote Equity in Uncertain Times
. 1-210. 10.1093/9780197750582.001.0001
Kundu, A. (2025). Transforming Educational Leadership: Non-Traditional Narratives to Promote Equity in Uncertain Times
. 1-210. 10.1093/9780197750582.001.0001
In 2020, the author delivered a viral TED Talk on the US Opportunity Gap in Education. The talk became the fifty most popular TED Talk that year, watched by millions of viewers. Among them was a Black single mother named Denise Williamson, who reached out to the author soon after watching the video online. Williamson wanted to discuss her own experiences in education and especially that of her two daughters who experienced racialized tracking in their schools. Despite her daughters being gifted, they were held back from honors and other advanced coursework. Williamson also told the author about her painstaking efforts to correct the injustice. In this prologue, the author roadmaps a primary aim of this book: to apply a sociological perspective to understand how and why such inequitable practices have continued to prominently define education in the US. However, this is only part of the book’s purpose. The other goal is to uplift stories like Williamson’s, of individuals who have dared to defy and disrupt the status quo of inequitable schooling conditions. This book is a tribute to such leaders and a resource for others who boldly strive to promote equity.
