Critical Consciousness and Schooling: The Impact of the Community as a Classroom Program on Academic Indicators

D Luter,Henry Taylor,Austin Mitchell

doi:10.3390/educsci7010025

Abstract

The present study investigates the extent to which a program guided by the principles of critical pedagogy, which seeks to develop critical consciousness, is associated with the improved academic performance of students attending a low-performance middle-school in Buffalo, New York. The students were enrolled in an in-school academic support program called the Community as Classroom, which used critical project-based learning to show students how to improve neighborhood conditions. The study found that the Community as Classroom program bolstered student engagement as reflected in improved attendance, on-time-arrival at school, and reduced suspensions. Although class grades did not improve, standardized scores, particularly in Math and Science, dramatically improved for these students from the lowest scoring categories. We suspect that given increased student engagement and dramatically improved standardized test scores, teacher bias might be the cause of no improvements in class grades. We conclude that critical pedagogy, which leads to increased critical consciousness, is a tool that can lead to improved academic performance of students. Such a pedagogy, we argue, should be more widely used in public schools, with a particular emphasis on their deployment in Community Schools.

Highlights

Urban education is beset with a crisis, but no consensus exists on how best to address it [1,2]
Selects students with better performance (Never Community as Classroom (CAC)), whether student performance improves as a result of enrollment in CAC programs (During CAC), and how students that drop out of the program compare with average student performance before enrolling in the CAC (Left CAC)
The CAC uses a critical pedagogical approach, and the study results show that such a pedagogy is associated with enhanced student engagement and improved academic performance

Summary

Introduction

Urban education is beset with a crisis, but no consensus exists on how best to address it [1,2]. The problem is most intervention strategies focus on “building centered” activities, which stress training and/or replacing principals, professional development, and bolstering student support, including the development of mentoring and after-school programs [3]. Intervention strategies that connect school reform to neighborhood development are largely overlooked. We are referring to activities that improve housing and physical conditions, strengthen social and institutional processes, develop community capacity and collective efficacy, and bolster community economic development and access to the metropolitan opportunity structure. Service delivery, rather than engagement in participatory, community-based problem-solving activities that spawn radical neighborhood transformation [4,5].

Results

Discussion

Conclusion