Today I’d love to share a fairly popular education/social concept developed by theorist Paulo Freire: Critical consciousness.
The following notes is edited on the basis of the Authentic Connection homework assignment as well as the group project entitled “Using Critical Consciousness to Empower English Language Learners & Immigrants” in the course EDUC 700 Research and Practice in the Preparation of Teachers for Diverse Populations.
Construed as “an active state of thinking” (Radd & Macey, 2014, p. 3), critical consciousness is awareness and knowledge that enable people to not only detect how power and privilege operate to reproduce oppression and inequity but also question any set of subtle assumptions hidden in “dominant narratives” (Apple, 1990, as cited in Radd & Macey, 2014; Brookfireld, 2005, as cited in Radd & Macey, 2014; Kumashiro, 2012, as cited in Radd & Macey, 2014).
With that in mind, Radd and Macey (2014) called attention to the fact that critical consciousness is the core of transformative professional learning/development. Teachers can engage in critical dialogues or critical inquiry through the use of reflection journals or blogs and through the participation in the critical communities of practice. Only by carefully discerning and deeply analyzing the current education conditions, structures, beliefs and norms as well as actively imagining the alternative possibilities for current practices can meaningful changes for equity be made.
Howard (2018) furthered the idea by proposing that education should build teachers’ critical consciousness to enable them to gain a sharp understanding of how the world works, what’s wrong with it, and how they could be involved in fixing it. Doing so means taking the ownership of the new belief system, which may better position teachers to make responsive and pedagogically skillful decisions (Bales & Scaffold, 2011). Along similar lines, the framework of Data Driven Decision Making (DDDM) in Marsh & Ferrell (2015) also underscored the importance of how critical dialogues empower teachers to act on new knowledge by offering opportunities for them to reflect on how their previous instructional choices may have led to certain student outcomes.
To sum up, critical consciousness plays an essential part in teacher education, as it supports teachers to re-think their past knowledge and belief systems, to re-examine the intersectionality of diverse structural dimensions, to reconstruct meaning, and finally to re-connect themselves to their students.
Recommended Readings/Resources:
What is Critical Consciousness? What does it mean? (3:20) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4azIKWE5vjw
Dr. Dorinda Carter Andrews, TEDx LansingED Talk (2014)
Questions asked and extended from the above-mentioned TED Talk:
- How does my own social identities (e.g. my race, my class, my gender, my religion) shape my mindset about teaching and learning, the students that I am serving, and the practices that I act out? What is it more that I need to know about what I don’t know around those things related to culture, power, and difference?
- What is it more that I need to know about what I don’t know around those things related to culture, power, and difference?
- How can I be a more critically conscious leader and/or instructor?
References
Bales, B. L., & Saffold, F. (2011). A new era in the preparation of teachers for urban schools: Linking multiculturalism, disciplinary-based content, and pedagogy. Urban Education, 46(5), 953-974
García, E., Arias, M. B., Harris Murri, N. J., & Serna, C. (2010). Developing responsive teachers: A challenge for a demographic reality. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1-2), 132-142.
Howard, T. (June 16, 2018). A deep critical consciousness: An interview with Wayne Au. The Progressive. Retrieved from https://progressive.org/dispatches/deeper-critical-consciousness-in-education-Wayne-Au/
Marsh, J. A., & Farrell, C. C. (2015). How leaders can support teachers with data-driven decision making: A framework for understanding capacity building. Educational Management Administration Leadership, 43(2), 269–289. doi: 10.1177/1741143214537229
Radd, S. & Macey, E. M. (2014, April). Equity by design: Developing critical consciousness through professional learning. Great Lakes Equity Center. Retrieved from https://greatlakesequity.org/file/456/download?token=OwDT8f0S
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