Critical consciousness refers to the ability to analyze and take action against oppressive social forces shaping society. This longitudinal, mixed methods study compared the critical consciousness development of adolescents of color (n = 453) attending two sets of high schools featuring schooling models that represent "opposing"…

"Schooling for Critical Consciousness" addresses how schools can help Black and Latinx youth resist the negative effects of racial injustice and challenge its root causes. Scott Seider and Daren Graves draw on a four-year longitudinal study examining how five different mission-driven urban high schools foster critical consciousness among…

Critical consciousness refers to the ways in which individuals come to understand and challenge oppressive social forces. Philosopher-educator Paulo Freire argued that critical curiosity--an eagerness to learn more about and develop a deep understanding of issues of social justice--serves as an important catalyst to critical consciousness…

Research has suggested that critical consciousness--the ability to recognize and analyze systems of inequality and the commitment to take action against these systems--can be a gateway to academic motivation and achievement for marginalized students. To explore this approach, the authors studied five urban schools that include critical…

This mixed methods study investigated the impact of learning about homelessness on the civic development of privileged adolescents. Pre-post surveys, classroom observations, and qualitative interviews revealed that the participating adolescents developed a more complex understanding of the factors that contribute to homelessness; however, this…

In this study, I investigate the beliefs of privileged adolescents about their obligations to those contending with hunger and poverty as well as the impact of "trolley problems" upon these adolescents' beliefs. To consider the attitudes of the young adults in this study, I draw upon their student writing from a course on social issues…

In this study, I compared the shifts in attitude of affluent high school seniors participating in a course on social justice issues to a control group of similar adolescents. In this course, participating adolescents learned about social justice issues such as homelessness, poverty, world hunger, and illegal immigration. An analysis of presurvey…