DOI: 10.1002/yd.20417 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Critical social class and leadership practices Tori Svoboda Adele Lozano University of Wisconsin–La Crosse Correspondence Tori Svoboda, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, 345F Morris Hall, 1725 State Street, UW-La Crosse, La Cross, WI 54601, USA. Email: tsvoboda@uwlax.edu Abstract This chapter provides a brief overview of critical per- spectives on social class and leadership and describes a culturally sustaining and class-conscious leadership approach. Case scenarios illustrate using the approach for reflective practice. As former student affairs professionals and current student affairs preparation program faculty, we notice people typically equate “class” with socioeconomic status, mostly based on family income, but sometimes also including parental occupation and education or family wealth. College administrators pay some attention to the trajectories of Pell Grant- eligible students, just as K-12 administrators document the performance of “free/reduced lunch” students in a school district. Most people understand social class of origin influ- ences whether students attend any postsecondary education, where they enroll (in terms of institutional selectivity and proximity to home), and how they persist, but little attention is paid to how social class of origin shapes other phenomena such as leadership practices. Research about social class offers few common definitions and it is difficult to tease apart other variables such as race or ethnicity. Some research conflates social class with first-generation college student status. Not all first-generation college students are from poor or working-class backgrounds, and not all students from poor or working-class back- grounds are first generation college students, even as those may be connected for some (Goward, 2018). Research on low-income or first-generation students of color does not always include a class analysis, and research on low-income or white first-generation col- lege students does not always include a race analysis. And yet, race and class are both present, at all times. Few researchers adopt a race+class (Sarcedo et al., 2015) analysis, yet as Park (2018) adeptly illustrates, equity is best achieved when both race and class are con- sidered. Critical leadership development encourages us to examine leadership practice from a social class lens. Dugan and Humbles (2018) explain that critical leadership development “examines how taken-for-granted assumptions, power, and inequity influence how leader roles and leadership processes are understood, experienced, and enacted” (p. 11). A class- conscious approach to leadership—one that explores the complex intersections between class, race, and gender (among other variables)—reveals how contemporary leadership practices affirm white and middle, upper/professional class norms and advances class inequities while appearing to be neutral. New Dir Stud Lead. 2021;2021:23–31. © 2021 Wiley Periodicals, LLC. 23 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/yd