Critical Consciousness and Empowerment Issues in Undergraduate Classrooms

Abstract

It is important to practice critical skills in the classroom in order to empower learners and to have a critical consciousness, such as critical thinking, dialogue, and problem solving. In the present study, undergraduate students' perceptions (by gender) of the practice of critical consciousness in the classroom at Taif University, Saudi Arabia is investigated. Freire's conceptualization of critical consciousness is used as the study's theoretical framework. That conceptualization is focused on critical thinking, dialogue, and problem-solving. A quantitative approach is utilized with a self-administered questionnaire in collecting data from the respondents. The results of this study indicated that Saudi undergraduate students' perspective was positive about the practice of the three elements of critical consciousness. Furthermore, there were statistically significant differences at α = 0.05 among undergraduate students' perspective on the practice of critical consciousness, including dialogue, critical thinking, and the total practice based on their gender. The direction of the differences was a benefit for females.