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Critical Consciousness and Immigrant Students

Critical consciousness is defined as the individual’s ability to recognize and effectively work against the oppression and inequality they must face in society. The inclusion of critical consciousness in schools for children and teenagers as an educational strategy has grown in popularity in recent decades. The addition of critical consciousness serves as a call to action to appropriately name and address these oppressive forces and as such could be a helpful strategy for educating immigrant students who face marginalization.

Critical consciousness can be experienced and measured on the scale of reflecting on individual beliefs, individual values and behaviors, as well as on the collective level; all of these measures play a part in another lens that examines critical consciousness from a different focal point, the group level which inspects the attitudes and beliefs of an individual as relating to the whole. That being said, an ecological perspective can be taken to determine the state of students’ critical consciousness as it is a result of all the different avenues of education they receive, which isn’t limited to schooling. These can include but are not limited to these types of relationships: parental, peer, after school programs, teams and any other contributor to childhood and adolescent development. Discussions with parents regarding issues of racism, violence and the roots of oppression can be an enormous support in encouraging the growth and success of children and adolescents, as well as their ability to critically reflect and commit to acting against these systems of marginalization. Additional support where schools facilitate group discussions with peers and continue to encourage and nurture students to understand their place and identity further contribute to higher levels of critical consciousness. The analysis broke up critical consciousness into subcategories worth studying such as critical reflection, political engagement, civic action, critical action (as in relation to crisis response or social activism) and critical motivation.

Qualitative studies were used to determine how critical consciousness could play a role in Social-Emotional development. The data collected alluded to the development of critical consciousness helping the individual to have increased confidence levels and higher amounts of compassion, resistance and resilience, as well as nurturing a sense of belonging and connection. In contrast, higher levels of critical self-reflection in regard to understanding the amount of oppression against them presented risks such as anxiety, depression or lack of academic engagement. However, other studies described that sociopolitical involvement coming from having critical consciousness had higher arching positive academic benefits such as increased levels of self-motivation, higher levels of achievement and better expectations around post-school careers.

Heberle, Rapa, and Farago(2020), conducted a systematic review where they examined 67 qualitative and quantitative studies on critical consciousness that spanned from 1998 to 2019. They discussed how despite being extensively studied, some of the sub-studies directly examined data and others used proxy measures to approximate and draw conclusions. As such they stated that further research is required to understand how to supplement this topic, expand upon its exciting findings and best be able to apply this knowledge to educational programs.

The Impact of Historical Trauma on Health Outcomes for Indigenous Populations in the USA and Canada: A Systematic Review

Critical Consciousness in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review, Critical Assessment, and Recommendations for Future Research

An Integrative Development-in-Sociocultural-Context Model for Children’s Engagement in Learning