Developing one's critical-consciousness

Abstract

Teaching in the service of social justice requires an understanding of how our belief structures and identities inform our practice. For that reason, the experience of secondary social studies teachers as they develop and reflect on their critical consciousness was the focus of this study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven social studies teachers across three middle schools and one high school, all within the same charter network in Greater Boston. Transcripts were analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to identify trends and three themes emerged. The first theme is the importance of having diverse teaching models and experiences in one's upbringing as well as high-quality post-college professional development opportunities to provide exposure for one's early consciousness-raising. The second theme is that social studies teachers experience consciousness-raising as a journey with unique questions related to their content, namely the concept of neutrality and truth as it exists in history and civics education. The third theme summarizes moments of challenge and tension, particularly between school systems and relationship-building, deeper thinking of one's internalized bias and an acknowledgement of the impact of whiteness in practice. Critical Consciousness and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy were used as a framework to better understand the implications of these findings within the classroom and larger school environment. Specifically, teachers need more training in critical theory and consciousness-raising, a community to practice these beliefs and enact their political agency, and radical change through social action at the school, district and state level. Keywords: critical consciousness, Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, social studies education--Author's abstract