critical consciousness essay

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Critical consciousness: New directions for understanding its development during adolescence

Luke j. rapa.

a Department of Education and Human Development, Clemson University, Room 409-F, Gantt Circle, Clemson, SC 29634-0723, USA

G. John Geldhof

b Human Development and Family Studies, Oregon State University, 470 Waldo Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA

Drawing on the foundational theory of critical consciousness developed by Paulo Freire (1973, 1968/2000) , as well as more contemporary theorization about sociopolitical and critical consciousness development ( Watts, Diemer, & Voight, 2011 ), the articles appearing in this special issue consider critical consciousness as the dynamic interplay of three components. Critical reflection describes awareness and analysis of inequitable social conditions, critical motivation includes a commitment to creating positive social change that results in more equitable and just systems and outcomes, and critical action describes behaviors that support such change along with actions that directly address social inequities ( Diemer, Rapa, Voight, & McWhirter, 2016 ; Freire, 1973 ).

There has been a proliferation of research focused on critical consciousness over the past few decades ( Heberle, Rapa, & Farago, 2020 ). Through this scholarship, researchers and practitioners have generated new knowledge and garnered a new understanding of how critical consciousness can be measured ( Diemer, McWhirter, Ozer, & Rapa, 2015 ), how it develops ( Seider, El-Amin, & Kelly, 2020 ), as well as its various antecedents and associated outcomes ( Heberle et al., 2020 ). Yet, despite this burgeoning literature and the many new insights attained, a host of important questions remain unanswered: How do the components of critical consciousness relate to one another across developmental periods and over time, both within individuals and across groups? How can the measurement of critical consciousness be improved to better account for its component parts? How can the sensitivity of the instruments used to assess critical consciousness be enhanced? How does critical consciousness, measured quantitatively, compare to individuals' perceptions and interpretations of societal inequities, as well as to the behaviors in which they engage? How do the individual components of critical consciousness—for example critical reflection about perceived inequality—manifest within particular individuals or groups, and what outcomes result? For whom and under what conditions can critical consciousness be fostered? Are there certain points in development when youth are more ready than others to engage in or exhibit critical consciousness?

This special issue draws inspiration from such questions, focusing specifically on new directions for understanding the development of critical consciousness during adolescence. This collection of articles adds to our understanding of critical consciousness and paves the way for further inquiry to address key issues related to its measurement, development, mechanisms, precursors, and outcomes.

In the first paper, Rapa, Bolding, & Jamil, (2020) report on the development and initial validation of the Short Critical Consciousness Scale (CCS-S), a 14-item instrument that builds on previously-validated instruments ( Diemer, Rapa, Park, & Perry, 2017 ; Rapa, Diemer, & Roseth, 2020 ). The CCS-S streamlines, but also extends previous instrumentation so that it measures each dimension of critical consciousness. While a number critical consciousness measures have been developed in recent years ( Diemer et al., 2015 ; Heberle et al., 2020 ), the CCS-S is the first to assess critical consciousness via its tripartite conceptualization ( Watts et al., 2011 ). Rapa and colleagues (2020) also test and provide evidence supporting measurement invariance across ethnic-racial identification, age, and gender groups. Thus, this work supports the use of the CCS-S among a broad range of diverse youth.

In the second paper, Tyler et al., (2020) utilize large-scale quantitative and qualitative data, collected as part of the Stanford Civic Purpose Study ( Malin, Ballard, & Damon, 2015 ), to examine how youth engage in critical consciousness in their day-to-day lives. Drawing on qualitative data, Tyler and colleagues first investigate if, how, and why youth engage in actions aimed at addressing sociopolitical inequities. Using quantitative data, the authors then examine the extent to which youths' experiences with discrimination shape their engagement in critical action and other types of prosocial and civic action. They also test how critical reflection mediates those relations. Last, the authors integrate the quantitative and qualitative strands of their study to explore areas of overlap and uniqueness. Through this integration, Tyler and colleagues provide useful insights into the benefits of considering both quantitative and qualitative data when examining youths' critical consciousness and illustrate the nuanced associations between critical consciousness' reflection and action components.

Bowers et al., (2020) provide the last empirical contribution to the issue, drawing on a positive youth development (PYD) framework ( Lerner, Lerner, Bowers, & Geldhof, 2015 ) to examine the interaction between individual and context among high-achieving youth of color. In particular, the authors explore how critical reflection and spirituality relate to numerous PYD outcomes and consider how these associations are moderated by non-parental adult mentors. Critical reflection, spirituality, and mentoring predicted PYD in youth of color, with spirituality providing a greater benefit for younger youth while critical reflection and mentoring had greater benefit for older youth. Influential adults clearly play important roles as socializing agents and often support critical consciousness development in youth ( Heberle et al., 2020 ), and Bowers and colleagues provide important new evidence about the role adult mentors can play as they engage with youth who critically reflect on societal inequities.

Taken together, this collection of articles ( Bowers et al., 2020 ; Rapa et al., 2020 ; Tyler et al., 2020 ) signals at least two new directions—or at least newly explicit directions—for scholarship that aims to deepen understanding of critical consciousness. First, these papers signal the importance of narrowing critical consciousness scholarship. Researchers lack a comprehensive understanding of the complex ways elements of critical consciousness co-develop and interact, and granular studies explicitly designed to unpack these associations are necessary for providing empirical foundations for the continued development of critical consciousness theory. Scholars must continue to carry out focused inquiry that aims to elucidate interrelations among critical consciousness components ( Tyler et al., 2020 ) as well as further explore relations between critical consciousness and other adaptive outcomes of interest ( Bowers et al., 2020 ; see also Heberle et al., 2020 ). Narrow and targeted research will add to the growing body of evidence about the role of particular socializing agents, like mentors ( Bowers et al., 2020 ), or of specific experiences, such as discrimination ( Tyler et al., 2020 ), in shaping youths' critical reflection, motivation, and action. That is, future critical consciousness scholarship should endeavor to advance the field through focused scholarship that provides greater nuance and depth of understanding about critical consciousness and its development.

The papers in this special issue also signal the importance of expanding critical consciousness scholarship. Most contemporary critical consciousness scholarship has focused on the adolescent period ( Heberle et al., 2020 ), which is largely appropriate given the developmental trajectory of youth as they approach and move through the adolescent period (for discussion, see Bowers et al. 2020 and Tyler et al., 2020 ). Yet, as Bowers and colleagues (2020) suggest, despite adolescents' developing capacities to engage in critical reflection, some developmental competencies may manifest earlier for certain high-achieving youth. That is, critical consciousness development may not be uniform across individuals or throughout developmental periods. Moreover, as Rapa and colleagues (2020) demonstrate, preadolescent youth may exhibit critical consciousness, to some degree, as they develop competencies to analyze, understand, and respond to inequities they perceive in the world around them. Thus, additional knowledge about how critical consciousness develops and functions over the life course including, though not limited to, the adolescent period will strengthen the impact of critical consciousness research in applied settings.

These papers also signal the importance of expanding critical consciousness scholarship to include those who hold relatively more privileged status ( Tyler et al., 2020 )—an issue scholars have raised for some time (e.g., Diemer et al., 2016 ) but have not yet completely addressed. Finally, these papers also signal the importance of expanding critical consciousness measurement along with the methodological approaches used to study critical consciousness development and functioning ( Rapa et al. 2020 ; Tyler et al., 2020 ). In sum, future critical consciousness scholarship should continue to expand in scope in order to provide a more holistic understanding of, and more comprehensive insights about, the development of critical consciousness and its association with adaptive outcomes across the life course.

When we began initial discussions to plan this special issue, we had no foresight of what the year 2020 would thrust upon us. These papers were drafted for initial presentation at a symposium organized for the 11th Biennial Meeting of the Society for the Study of Human Development , held in Portland, Oregon in October 2019. Just a few months after that meeting, day-to-day life throughout the world drastically changed. In December 2019, the first diagnosed cases of what has become known as COVID-19 were recorded, and the ways we engage in many of life's normative activities—education, work, travel, leisure, sport, celebration, and mourning—were altered as a result. As the disease quickly spread across the globe, we were all hoisted into the throes of a pandemic that has left millions affected, hundreds of thousands dead (thus far), and inconceivable health and economic consequences in its wake. As the disease ravages on, its effects—on individuals, families, communities, and nations—are neither fully known nor have they reached their terminus.

At the same time, day-to-day life for many Americans—particularly Black and Brown Americans, along with other Black, Indigenous, and people of color throughout the world—has long been marked by a pandemic of another kind ( Healy & Searcey, 2020 ; see also CNN Tonight, 2020 ). Against the backdrop of settler colonialism, neoliberalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, experiences with racism, classism, genderism, violence (for example, at the hands of police), and other systemic forms of marginalization and oppression have characterized normative experience for many ( Causadias & Umaña-Taylor, 2018 ; García Coll et al., 1996 ; Godfrey & Burson, 2018 ).

Notwithstanding, there are some who recognize the extent of such disparities and who choose to rise up, take a stand, and engage in actions aimed at challenging and rectifying such inequitable and unjust social conditions. As this introduction was being written (late July/early August 2020), and in the same city where the papers in this special issue were initially presented, members of the Portland community contend with occupation by militarized federal agents as they continue in their months-long #BlackLivesMatter protest organized in response to the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and many others. Meanwhile, the body of Representative John Lewis lies in state at the United States Capitol, where the late Congressman is being honored for a lifetime of service to the American people and for his tireless efforts and great sacrifices made in the name of civil rights. While Congressman Lewis' repose is, in some respects, a corporal sign of the progress, hope, and transformation that can happen when people engage in “reflection and action on the world in order to transform it” ( Freire, 1968/2000 , p. 51), it is also a visceral reminder of the work yet to be done. No country has yet realized the equitable and just outcomes for which Rep. Lewis fought—and for which so many others, armed with critical consciousness, continue to fight.

We conclude this introduction to the special issue, just over midway through this remarkable and seemingly unrelenting year, by suggesting that critical consciousness is as important and relevant right now, at this historical moment, as it has ever been. Indeed, just as critical consciousness may support adaptive development and enhance well-being among those experiencing marginalization and oppression ( Bowers et al., 2020 ; see also Diemer et al., 2016 ), so too may it be a means by which individuals, marginalized or not, come to recognize and act to change societal inequities in service of liberation for all ( Rapa et al., 2020 , Tyler et al., 2020 ).

We are grateful to the Journal's editor-in-chief, Becky Kochenderfer-Ladd, for the opportunity to develop this special issue, and we offer our sincere thanks to all who contributed to this work through the review and production processes. We are also grateful to Professor Matt Diemer, for his willingness to engage thoughtfully in this project and for his commentary on these papers, which point to new directions for understanding critical consciousness development during adolescence.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare with regard to this research.

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Cultivating Critical Consciousness in the Classroom

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At Facing History’s inaugural Teaching for Equity and Justice summit in 2020, we had the opportunity to hear from Dr. Scott Seider and Dr. Daren Graves—two developmental psychologists committed to deepening communities’ capacities to educate and care for Black and brown youth. Co-authors of Schooling for Critical Consciousness: Engaging Black and Latinx Youth in Analyzing, Navigating, and Challenging Racial Injustice , Seider and Graves shared a wealth of insights from their research on the importance of cultivating critical consciousness in the classroom and how to get started. Below are some excerpts from their presentation, which feel just as relevant as we start this new school year as they did when we first spoke to them:

Dr. Daren Graves: We are building on the definition of critical consciousness that was laid out by Paulo Freire in his famous book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed … For those who may not know, he was a Brazilian educational philosopher who worked with poor, rural Brazilians to help in a schooling process that was focused on helping disempowered, if not oppressed, folks use schooling as a means to become...change agents over their own condition and transform their own communities... And so in this highly politicized way of thinking about schooling and education, Freire defines critical consciousness as the ability to recognize oppressive social forces shaping society and to take action against them … In this famous quotation that people know from Freire, “we read the word to read the world.” In other words... we gain functional literacy as a means to gain transformative literacy...

Critical consciousness is not a diversion from the outcomes many of us who are educators are interested in. There is a lot of empirical research that shows that higher critical consciousness is associated with higher self-esteem, higher political engagement, higher professional aspirations, academic engagement, even higher academic achievement . When they develop critical consciousness, young folks develop a resilience to forces whether they’re institutional or personal... a protective armor against the things that would [lead us to] blame ourselves and not [see] that the systems that are in place are causing these things. And so being able to recognize these systems and be able to do something about it gives us resilience in the face of racism in general and then, of course, the psychosocial outcomes we’re interested in as educators.

In terms of how Dr. Seider and I are conceptualizing critical consciousness, we are building off the work of Watts, Diemer, and Voight who saw critical consciousness as having three components:

Social analysis : the ability to name and analyze social, political, and economic forces that contribute to inequity and inequality Political agency : the belief that one has the capacity to affect social and political change, the feeling that if one wanted to make a change, they could do it Social action : the wide range of activities that individuals engage in to challenge oppressive forces

So what does this mean? How do we study this? Our research question was what role can teachers and educators play in critical consciousness? We went to five different high schools in the Northeast [that were actively engaged in this work]...to explore a variety of pedagogical approaches. It was a longitudinal study and we collected both quantitative and qualitative data…

SS and DG: The book we wrote reports on each of these five different schools and the ways they foster young pupils’ critical consciousness over their four years of high school. We would like to talk to you about four key practices that we observed and were found to have effects on different dimensions of young pupils’ critical consciousness.

The young people were finishing high school with a greater and deeper understanding of systemic racism than their peers across the other schools… Every single ninth grader took a course in their ninth grade year called Social Engagement [where] the young people are introduced to a framework that was referred to as “the three eyes of oppression.” Students learning from students builds a culture in which the projects become more and more profound as more and more students are brought into the culture... Schools that gave students opportunities to affect change within the school building…[fostered] feelings of political agency… Opportunities to affect change within your school community unequivocally impact your feelings of agency to affect changes in other communities... Real-world assignments were another type of tool that coincides with developing students’ capacity to be involved in social action… There are a lot of real-world assignments, opportunities for students to think about our country or their community and then take those issues and put them into action. 

Facing History & Ourselves invites educators to access the rest of this conversation by viewing our on-demand webinar with Dr. Scott Seider and Dr. Daren Graves.

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Dialogue, Critical Consciousness, and Praxis

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• Cathy Vaughan  

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Social psychological analyses of communication inevitably encounter the debate between those social theorists convinced of the possibility of genuine communicative exchange, and those who doubt that effective and properly equal forms of communicative exchange are practically achievable at all. However, what is often overlooked in this debate is the role of interaction between self and other in the development of persons in the first place:

The psychology of self-other relations shows that while communication between self and other is indeed a difficult process, fraught with contradictory and destructive energies, it also contains a positivity without which there would be no person at all. (Jovchelovitch, 2007, p. 131)

As highlighted in the previous chapter, Vygotsky posits that interactions between self and other are the basis for the development of higher cognitive functions in humans. This chapter will explore the role of self-other interaction in the construction of social worlds, and outline the foundational role of communication between self and other in efforts towards transforming those social worlds (social change).

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Vaughan, C. (2011). Dialogue, Critical Consciousness, and Praxis. In: Hook, D., Franks, B., Bauer, M.W. (eds) The Social Psychology of Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230297616_3

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Schooling for Critical Consciousness

• Posted April 8, 2020
• By Jill Anderson

What is the role of schools in teaching students, especially students of color, how to face oppression and develop political agency? Are there ways that some educators succeed in doing this in one school but not in another school? Daren Graves, Ed.D.'06, and Scott Seider,  Ed.M.'04, Ed.D.'08, authors of Schooling for Critical Consciousness , were eager to find the answers and set out to research five mission-driven high schools over four years. In this episode of the Harvard EdCast, they share the ways that educators and school leaders can help young people better understand and challenge racial injustices.

Jill Anderson: I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast. The nation reacted to the shooting of 17 year old Trayvon Martin in 2012 with protest rallies and marches. Since then, issues of racial inequality and oppression have taken center stage making Professors Daren Graves and Scott Seider wonder just how schools were helping young people make sense of it all. They followed students in five mission-driven urban high schools over four years to get some understanding on how education can foster critical consciousness. What they discovered was there's a lot of different ways educators can create this space for students and that it can even change their outcomes. I asked them what they mean when they say schooling for critical consciousness.

Daren Graves: When we say schooling for critical consciousness, we're asking how are schools facilitating the process to help students analyze, navigate, and challenge oppression.

Scott Seider: And I think our central research question as we began this project together was, well, what role can schools and educators play in supporting the critical consciousness development of youth of color. We assume that this work was taking place in various ways in different types of schools, and our goal was to think a little bit more systematically about it and look for schools that had practices related to helping kids analyze forces of oppression like racism, schools that had practices and programming in place to engage young people in thinking about how to navigate issues of racism and racial injustice, and schools that were explicitly engaged in helping young people learn how to challenge racism and racial injustice.

Daren Graves: We assume there were going to be different ways this could look because we know that there's lots of reasonable debate about what this should look like, how it can happen, can it happen in schools. And so we pretty much assume that there's going to be a variety of ways this could look. And we definitely didn't go in there thinking that we were going to find the way to do this.

Scott mentioned before that we were very aware that teachers are going to be in many different types of contexts. And so we were very interested in seeing those different kinds of contexts and assuming that there was going to be different kinds of success in those contexts.

Scott Seider: And to even push that even further, we explicitly sought out schools that took different pedagogical approaches to doing their work. One of the schools in our project was an expeditionary learning school. Another had named itself after Paulo Freire and was explicitly utilizing Freire's problem-posing approach to education. Another school on our study belonged to the Coalition of Essential Schools and used habits-of-mind approach.

And our goal, as Daren had said, was not to identify the school that was doing the best job at fostering youth critical consciousness, but rather to see what types of practices were happening in these different contexts that educators could benefit from.

Jill Anderson: What really struck you as, wow, this is really amazing and can be transferable outside of here. We want to talk about a few of those examples.

Scott Seider: Sure, and I should say that our goal in this project was to follow the young people at these five schools from their first day of freshman year to their last day of senior year with the goal of understanding how their critical consciousness changed over four years of high school, and then sort of identifying schooling practices that contributed to that.

Daren talked a little bit before about this idea that critical consciousnesses is your ability to analyze oppressive social forces, your feelings of political agency, to make change, and your commitment to engaging in action that actually makes change.

To give just one example, and this is a political agency example, one of the schools in our study had a civics class in the 11th grade, and as part of this 11th grade civics class, the students were assigned to look at the school handbook and identify a policy that they perceive to be unjust or unfair. So the students in the class of 2017 that we were following, they chose the school's technology policy. They felt like the school's technology policy was outdated and wasn't allowing students to make use of technology to support their learning.

And so what the students then did over the course of several weeks as part of the civics class was to engage in research to support their contention that this was an unjust policy. And then they used the research that they did to propose a new policy. They developed the language for a new policy for technology that might guide the school.

Then as a group, they put that research and that new policy proposal together into a presentation, which they then made to the school's faculty. The faculty listened very seriously to the proposal and actually then responded with a formal letter to their students saying, "Hey, we think this was a very compelling presentation. Here are some additional questions that we have about the proposal you're putting forth." The students had to go back into the research to respond to those questions.

And ultimately, and I think this was a really important move by the faculty at this school, the faculty ultimately voted to change their technology policy for the remainder of the school year to this proposal that the students had put forth with the idea that if it goes smoothly, this will become our permanent policy, and if not, we'll go back to the drawing board.

And I can tell you that the students in this school, from our interviews with them, from our observations, felt incredibly empowered by this opportunity to make a change within their school community. I think that when we started the project, Daren and I were not sure that the opportunity to make a change within your school community would feel meaningful to young people. And I think that one of our learnings as we went along was that for young people, your school community is as real a community as any other community that you're a part of. And the opportunity to sort of make a change within that community absolutely felt transferrable to them in terms of their feelings of agency to make a change. So that's one example and I think... Let me turn to Daren to offer another one.

Daren Graves: I'm going to choose an out-of-school change example. One of the schools that we were working at, a European country had essentially created a travel ban to the neighborhood in which the school was located because it was deemed to be dangerous or whatever. Right?

And so the school and the students found out about this and the school organized the opportunity to both do research about how they came to these conclusions. Right? And then ultimately and more importantly, then actually physically went to that consul and met with the head consul person of that country and persuaded them or tried to persuade... I can't even remember if they were successful. It almost doesn't matter to me... to change this policy and to get that person to re-imagine how they would think about that community. So I thought that was a really great one.

Another one just real quick that was similar was in a different school that did year-long senior projects where they were supposed to be very community engaged. At this particular school, the community was going through gentrification. It had a long history of being a hotbed of culture for folks of color and was going through some changes. It was a real issue for that community in which the school was embedded. And so for the student senior project in which they spend the whole year basically doing research about the topic and then organizing some form of action to do around the research.

So the student was doing research on gentrification and integration in that community and then ultimately facilitated a gentrification community panel out in the community with community members, with leaders from the community who she was facilitating this conversation with. And so those examples where students were able to take the things that they learned, that the knowledge, the behaviors, the dispositions and move it outside the walls of their schools were also very exciting to us. Especially because it requires a disposition as a school, as school culture, as school leaders to just think of schools that situated within communities, not separate from them, and giving students the skills to be able to walk outside the walls of the school and still be doing important learning that's scaffold in a way that will help them develop both the skills and the will to do this work.

Scott Seider: And maybe I would just add just because I think a couple of the examples we offered might feel like really big examples, examples that are part of a whole unit or part of a whole senior project. I also think that we saw this work taking place in much smaller ways.

So, in fact, at the school that Daren was talking about that engaged with the consul general of a European country to push back against the travel warning, we also saw in a ninth grade humanities class in that same school, the students were studying colonialism. And the final assessment was to write a letter to one of your elected representatives expressing your opinion about what the United States relationship to Puerto Rico should be, what would be a just relationship. And the students wrote their letters and engaged in that process, sent them off.

And, of course, when you write to an elected representative, you get a response and somebody in that elected representative's office really does take the time to respond and to pay attention to this outreach. And I think the students also felt really empowered by that much smaller example of social action where they now knew who their elected representatives were. How do you reach out to them? If you reach out to them, you will get some interaction from that representative. And I think even a smaller example like that was an example of ways in which schools in our project were actively working to develop the skills and mindsets to do critical consciousness work with their students.

Jill Anderson: What were the students' reactions to this? Because hearing this, I think, gosh, this should just be happening everywhere, which I know it's not.

Daren Graves: Yeah, that's a great question. I think we were really trying to take a student-centered approach to this work and so we were really interested in trying to understand this through the eyes and the perceptions of the students.

What's really interesting about this work is that it was longitude and we did watch it. We started watching these scenes from ninth grade through 12th grade. And so some of the students we got to... We had subsets of students that we interviewed and watched and observed over time. So we would see change, some of which we would see students who maybe early on in their school careers didn't think there was a lot of injustice or unfairness in the world.

And then by the end they had like complex ways of understanding the ways that there was. And so some of this was about just seeing change. In terms of how they were reacting to, how they felt about doing this kind of schooling, some students loved it. It gave them language for things that they were experiencing and it affirmed, right? Their experience.

But some students might be like, "This is just something I got to do." Right? And so for some students the senior projects were like, yes, this is a chance. Right? For other students it's like, "I have to do a senior project because I have to do a senior project." Right? And I would think that really speaks to some of the different approaches and focus that the schools had. I'll let Scott say a little bit more about that, that I think that's part of the story of the research.

Scott Seider: One thing that jumps out at me right away is that at one of the schools, the school that we were talking about that had those senior projects where over the course of senior year, every single senior had to plan and then execute a social action project.

One of the fascinating things about watching that was that because every single senior in the school was doing it, they basically needed to enlist younger students to help them carry out the projects. And so what was really fascinating to us, and as Daren mentioned, we interviewed young people in each year of high school and as they went along. Yes, the senior year project was meaningful to a high percentage of students. Just as often we heard them tell us about their participation in an older students project as something that was really impactful and meaningful.

So it was really interesting to us to A, see that this senior year project had this ripple effect that permeated the entire school culture to the point that ninth graders would be telling us, "Oh, I'm already thinking about..." They called these projects the Change the World projects, and ninth graders would be telling you, "So I'm already thinking about a good Change the World project." And it was because they were watching the older students in their school carry out these projects and they were, in fact, participating alongside them.

So opportunities for students to teach other students is very, very, very powerful. And we saw that play out in different school in a number of different ways.

Daren Graves: I would say another really fascinating way in which students responded to this was when students started to take the skills and the dispositions, they were learning about resisting oppressive forces or racism and other things, and then applying that to the school itself. Right?

Scott gave great example where one school really created that space which we would advocate for, created a space for students to critique the school, make reasonable suggestions for change. But oftentimes what would happen a lot is that students would be like, "Well, hey, like this school, like let's look at all the teachers in this school," or looking at their racial demographics.

We had one particular class where they had an African-American literature class. The school was doing this on purpose as part of its mission and this class, which was predominantly black students named that we have a white male teacher teaching this African-American lit class and just named that dynamic is like that... Let's talk about that? Is this okay?

In that particular case, the teacher leader of that school, rather than squashing that and saying, "No, no, we are the teacher. We are the authority. We know what we're doing here." Right? "Don't worry about racism." Right? They said, "Okay, look. Let's think about this." And we saw that teacher's practice, who was very well-intentioned and a great teacher to start with, wasn't doing anything horribly wrong, but the intentionality of reaching out to the students, right? Letting them critique the space and then watch how the teacher changed his approach moving forward, trying to be more sensitive to that, naming his own positionality, naming the student's positional... Right? Was really powerful to see because part of the story is that some of these schools were just doing this, right? And we were just there to see how they were doing it. But some schools moved and changed.

Scott Seider: If we look at that specific African-American literature course and that specific school taught by a white teacher to a predominantly African-American group of students, watching the dialogue that the students asked for and the teacher made space for was really powerful. The students were reading James Baldwin in the class and the students, as a group, felt like the teacher's take on Baldwin and Baldwin's outlook on racial dynamics in the United States was too optimistic and they pushed for a different reading of Baldwin. So really watching this type of dialogue take place between the teachers and students, it felt like some of the richest learning that we watched take place.

Jill Anderson: That was a great example of being open to just stating the obvious and working through the challenges in that and uncomfortableness of it really, I guess.

Daren Graves: Right, and I think it's also a great example of the dispositions of being a reciprocal teacher. So, in other words, seeing your students as reciprocal teachers and learners. Even well-intentioned teachers, if they see themselves as the authority, can be threatened by the notion of students starting to say, "Hey, let's do things differently in here." For all teachers and especially, I think, for white teachers, having a reasonably reciprocal relationship with your students as teachers and learners will help just in the way of becoming a learner of your students so that you can better teach them.

Scott Seider: Another sort of fertile moment for critical consciousness work was when teachers got personal with their students. And for teachers of color, we observed examples where an African-American male teacher in one of the schools we were studying talk to his students about being pulled over by police officers one evening while he was picking up take out food, for no particular reason. And he talked to the students about that experience in a really straightforward way.

Another teacher of color in our study, the students were in her class were doing narrative writing and the teacher had put together her own narrative writing example about an important moment in her life. And she wrote about this moment in her first weeks of graduate school where she, a teacher of color, asked to join a study group and the white students in the study group said, "No, because no one here thinks you're going to graduate."

And she talked about the sting of that experience and her response to that experience. And those were really powerful, fraught but powerful, moments in the classroom where it felt like a lot of learning was taking place. And so it underscored for us that teachers of color have a powerful opportunity to do critical consciousness work around issues of race with their students, but as we've been talking about, we also think that there are opportunities for white teachers to be also personal with their students about their own experiences of whiteness and to be reflective about their whiteness and how that impacts their teaching and learning and their lives and their movement through the world.

That teacher leading the African-American literature class was a really terrific example of that kind of reflective teacher open to really engaging in dialogue about what his whiteness meant for himself and his students.

Jill Anderson: Were there things that you saw that just didn't seem to work?

Daren Graves: We had one school, predominantly African-American school, actually help students practice certain activism skills as they brought these students to one or two rallies that were about funding for state education and making it more equitable so that their school and other schools could get more funding. And so this was a school that definitely let them practice those skills in that way.

And this predominantly black school had predominantly white teachers and predominantly white leadership. After the firing of a particular staff member, the students just had enough and they were saying that the teacher staff was way too white and we want to make a statement about this. So they essentially planned a walkout of the school.

You know from our perspective, again, we are excited about opportunities for students to reasonably practice skills to navigate and challenge oppression. So what basically happened is the students organized a walkout, and the school reacted very punitively. In other words, students were going to be marked absent, and, therefore, students who were marked absent weren't going to get access to bathrooms. They weren't going to get school lunch. They weren't going to get a ride home. They were locked out. They weren't going to be able to participate in sports that afternoon. It was just a complete shutdown of this process which could have been handled really, really differently.

We were in other schools, and one other school, in particular, that the students wanted to do a walkout and it was controversial. I think it was around our current administration's policies, around immigration, and other things. Right? And parents were worried, either because they had their own different political views or just because they were worried about the safety of the students, and this school reacted very differently.

They took many, many different measures to ensure the safety of the students, to make it optional, to not punish students for being involved in this work. Quite the contrary, they were very happy to help, at least facilitate it as a teachable moment without necessarily advocating any particular political views.

And so yes, I think we have to understand that when we're doing this schooling for critical consciousness work, because racism is so pervasive and pernicious, students are going to see it happening in their schools, we need not take it personally because it's not necessarily reflection on our intentions or things like that. It's just the way that this system goes and we need to think of an outcome of schooling as having students to be civically engaged, and to shut down opportunities for students to be civically engaged in ways that are reasonable, in ways that protect their safety and other things, is countered to the purpose of schooling for us.

Jill Anderson: That's a big one because I know there was a lot of walkouts planned and it was controversial. What do you do when your students want to plan a walkout? Do you shut it down or do you allow it to happen? So sounds like from your work you allow it to happen in a smart, responsive, constructed way where there's something to learn from it.

Scott Seider: We don't want to sound naive in the sense that we absolutely recognize that when students are planning a walkout that is stressful for school leaders and educators in the sense that there are safety concerns, there are academic learning concerns, and so on and so forth. And so it's not our contention that this is not a challenging moment for a school leader or an educator. We would hope that school leaders would also recognize that this is a learning moment, and that students are doing something that's meaningful and important to them, and it certainly seems worthwhile to us to engage the students as mature civic agents in responding to this.

Daren referenced that there was one school that seemed to blow it in responding purely punitively and not recognizing there was opportunities for learning and dialogue and discussion on everybody's parts.

And then we watched another school have a really, really different response to a student walkout where the school leaders, first and foremost, made sure that this was going to be safe, and they really engaged in negotiation and discussion with the students to ensure safety in terms of where the walkout was taking place, and when it was going to happen, and so on and so forth, and then engaged with the students as responsible community members. And again, I think that was a school where the students came away from the experience feeling really empowered about the experience and really excited about the opportunity to be a civic actor in a community they cared about.

Daren Graves: And it definitely doesn't need to be successful either. I find that when it's not successful, that's actually even better because then the teaching continues and the real lifeness of it is there. And so I would also hope that educators earnestly trying to do this, don't see it as and, therefore, and they must, and the students also must get what they want too, right? Because that's part of it might be, as we saw in one of these schools, part of it might be they might get it, they might not, it's a negotiation. The real life is the process.

Jill Anderson: It sounds like a lot of this is really about embracing everything as a learning moment and being open to it for educators and school leaders.

Scott Seider: I think sometimes folks think about this critical conscious work as extra or even potentially a distraction from students' academic development. But I think I would say two things about that. So one, one of the principals of the schools we were studying, she explained that one of the reasons critical consciousness work was so important to her is that she herself was a woman of color. She was a black woman. And she explained that she needed this sort of critical conscious messaging to be a part of her own schooling in high school and college for the work itself to feel meaningful for her and to be able to contend with the racism that she was experiencing in the various communities in which she was learning. She felt like her students needed that critical consciousness work in order to have the resilience to continue to move forward with their academics and with their learning and with their striving.

And then our research actually supports that. By virtue of studying students over four years of high school, we collected data on their critical consciousness development from the beginning of ninth grade to the end of 12th grade. And then when we asked the schools for students' academic achievement data at the end of high school, and what we found was that students who demonstrated the steepest growth in their critical consciousness over four years of high school, that correlated with their cumulative grade point average. So in other words, the students who demonstrated the biggest gains in critical consciousness over four years of high school were also the students who finished high school with the highest grade point averages.

There's a lot of potential explanations about why that might be, and this wasn't a causal study, but I think that that principal I just referenced before was getting it right when she explained that the young people who were more critically conscious, or becoming more critically conscious, felt an additional sense of purpose and meaning in their academic striving because they had a sense of what they wanted to do with this academic learning and with this education they were obtaining.

Daren actually, I think, has done a good all the way through this project of reminding our research team and reminding educators with whom we're working that this critical consciousness work is not something that's separate from students' academic lives, but rather it's something that's enriching and informing student's academic lives.

Jill Anderson: So for people listening who might be educators, they're thinking, I don't do any of this, or I don't really know how to get started, but I'd like to incorporate some of this into my classroom. Where do you get started with something?

Scott Seider: Of course, it depends on what you teach, but I think you can think about small ways to begin. Quite a number of the schools that we were studying had their students in ninth or 10th grade reading Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. And The Bluest Eye is this book that, in a really interesting and engaging way, helps students understand the way in which the dominant standards of beauty influence the world in which we live in and influence the ways in which we move through the world. Those messages about dominant standards of beauty are racialized, there's gender implications, and it was really powerful to watch ninth and 10th graders be offered through this novel, this framework for making sense of a force in the world that they experience and that they recognize, but maybe they didn't have a name for.

Even in just the reading of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye , you could see students' critical consciousness developing. That work wasn't taking place separate and apart from developing students' analytic skills, it was students applying those analytic skills to this issue of dominant standards of beauty.

The English teachers out there who are familiar with the Common Core know that there are all these opportunities within the Common Core to engage students in learning to take one text to make sense of another text. And quite a number of the schools that we were looking at would have students read a text like The Bluest Eye , but then they would give them an informational text like Peggy McIntosh's Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack and students would use that text to make sense of what was happening in the novel.

That's a really small example of how critical consciousness work can take root, but I think it was a really powerful example.

Daren Graves: To the educators who were starting to do this work, I would start in one of those domains that you feel you're most comfortable teaching yourself or is most relevant to your class or your discipline. And for some of us, it might lend itself towards a Toni Morrison or something that's textual, something that's like, "Let's read something to flex our analytic skills," right?

For other classes, it's going to be about like, "Okay, yes, we recognize that there's different forms of racism. What does that mean for how we position ourselves, comport ourselves, in a space to help navigate those pitfalls?" Others people are going to feel really comfortable getting their students doing something, projects action, right? So I would start with the place that I think you feel you're the most comfortable doing yourself and that your school culture allows.

Jill Anderson: Scott Seider is an associate professor at Boston College. Daren Graves is an associate professor at Simmons University. They are the authors of Schooling for Critical Consciousness: Engaging Black and Latinx Youth in Analyzing, Navigating, and Challenging Racial Injustice . I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening. Please subscribe.

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Critical consciousness: A key to student achievement

By Aaliyah El-Amin, Daren Graves, Jamie Johannsen, Jalene Tamerat, Madora Soutter, Shelby Clark, Saira Malhotra, Scott Seider | Feb 4, 2017 | Feature Article

Black students can achieve at higher levels when schools teach them how to see, name, and challenge racial oppression.

Research has suggested that critical consciousness — the ability to recognize and analyze systems of inequality and the commitment to take action against these systems — can be a gateway to academic motivation and achievement for marginalized students. That was certainly the case for Terrence, a junior at One Vision High School and a participant in a school project to develop a podcast titled “Our City Today.” Here’s what Terrence said about his participation in this project:

I wanted opportunities to speak openly with my peers about the things that we see every day. Crime rates, drug rates, riots. I had the chance to put the past in conversation with the future. I watched a documentary that showed how police brutality and issues like that have been going on for a long time . . . [and that black] children back in the day didn’t have the opportunity to come to a school like One Vision. I consider that a challenge. Sometimes I want to leave One Vision. Sometimes I want to leave so bad. But I know deep down in my heart why I’m here, so I buckle down and do my homework . . . I see the bigger picture.

A heightened critical consciousness helped Terrence commit to his schooling. Yet despite the benefits that critical consciousness development offers to students, little research has investigated how schools can develop black students’ critical consciousness of racial oppression.

To help fill this gap, we studied five urban schools in the northeast that serve predominantly black student bodies and include critical consciousness development in their mission. (The names for all of the schools are pseudonyms.) Our longitudinal, mixed-methods study focused on the role schools can play in preparing youth of color to analyze, navigate, and challenge oppressive conditions in our society. Terrence was one of 50 black high school students in the class of 2017 whom we interviewed over the past three years.

A key theme emerging from these interviews is that black teenagers are attuned to the vast array of unjust structural forces operating in their communities, in society, and in their schools. Schools seeking to increase black students’ academic achievement must directly address these relevant social forces. Otherwise, they’re missing what Terrence calls “the bigger picture.”

The case for critical consciousness

Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1970) conceived of critical consciousness while working with adult laborers in Brazil. Freire realized that inequality is sustained when the people most affected by it are unable to decode their social conditions. Freire proposed a cycle of critical consciousness development that involved gaining knowledge about the systems and structures that create and sustain inequity (critical analysis), developing a sense of power or capability (sense of agency), and ultimately committing to take action against oppressive conditions (critical action).

Contemporary research has found that critical consciousness not only expands young people’s commitment to challenging pervasive injustice (Ginwright, 2010; Watts, Diemer, & Voight, 2011) but also increases academic achievement and engagement (Carter, 2008; O’Connor, 1997). In particular, school-based programming designed to foster critical consciousness has been shown to increase academic engagement and achievement (Cabrera et al., 2014; Cammarota, 2007; Dee & Penner, 2016) and enrollment in higher education (Rogers & Terriquez, 2013). In explaining these relationships, researchers have suggested that critical consciousness of oppressive social forces can replace feelings of isolation and self-blame for one’s challenges with a sense of engagement in a broader collective struggle for social justice (Diemer et al., 2014; Ginwright, 2010). Research also suggests that a critical consciousness about racism, specifically, can motivate black students to resist oppressive forces through persisting in school and achieving in academics (Carter, 2008). This motivation is often fueled by a desire to prove wrong the stereotypes embedded in racist structures and institutions (Carter, 2008; Sanders, 1997). Terrence’s reflection about the persistent institutional racism he saw in his community as a challenge to stay the course in school is an example of such “achievement as resistance.”

Promising practices

Three strategies emerged from our study as promising practices schools can use to develop black students’ critical consciousness and harness the connection between critical consciousness and student achievement.

#1. Teach the language of inequality.

A key component of critical consciousness is the ability to recognize inequality and injustice (Watts, Griffith, & Abdul-Adil, 1999). For black students to successfully work against the conditions that create barriers to their learning, they need to notice when these barriers are at play and be able to communicate and explain what they notice. For example, Terrence’s participation in the “Our City Today” project gave him time and space to “see” his community and understand its challenges at a deeper level, and it also gave him access to language to explain what he noticed. Educators can support such development in their students by introducing a framework for analyzing inequity.

Make the Road Academy (MtRA), another high school in our study, introduced students to a framework for recognizing forms of racism in society. Students learned that racism can be transmitted in three ways: through interpersonal racism, racism that occurs between individuals, institutional racism, racism that is expressed by and through social and political institutions, and internalized racism, racist beliefs that marginalized groups hold against themselves. Teachers taught this framework, called The Three I’s, over several lessons. In one lesson our research team observed, students practiced their comprehension of each of the forms of racism by reviewing examples of racism from their community:

            Teacher:   How about when TV personality Judge Joe Brown tells black children they will be criminals in the courtroom?

         Student 1:   I called it interpersonal because he’s telling kids a stereotype.

           Teacher:   Exactly. Or when liquor stores are strategically placed on every corner in urban neighborhoods?

       Student 2:   I put institutional. They’re placing liquor stores in urban neighborhoods so a lot of people will smoke and drink.

           Teacher:   What about blacks believing their hair isn’t beautiful, so they buy “better” hair from other races?

       Student 3:   Institutional?

       Student 4:   Internalized oppression because society says that black people have coarse or knotty hair, and [some black women] believe it.

           Teacher:   [to clarify] When any race or group of people starts believing the stereotypes about them, this is internalized oppression.

Later, students were asked to diagram an urban neighborhood where racism was present and label each example with the appropriate “I” in the framework. Students drew a range of images:

• A business advertising for a job indicating, “No blacks” (institutional racism);
• A black student on a basketball court saying, “This is all I can do” (internalized racism); and
• A police officer racially profiling a black motorist (interpersonal racism).

Offering students language to distinguish among different types of racism gave them a tool that helped them read the world. One MtRA student, Mason, explained:

In school, they’re really teaching us how to be able to recognize it [racism] more. If you were to ask me a couple years back if I knew what internalized oppression was, I wouldn’t be able to tell you ’cause I didn’t know. But I know what it is now.

This clarity and language offer profound benefits. Oppression is easiest to sustain when the disenfranchised ignore it, miss it, or support it rather than resist it (Watts et al., 1999). Critical consciousness and the associated language of inequality make racial injustice visible. In schools, this visibility creates an opening for educators to discuss the role that social forces play in students’ lives and in students’ learning opportunities and outcomes.

#2. Create space to interrogate racism.

In addition to being able to recognize inequity and describe it, students need to understand the depths of inequality and the myriad forces that sustain it. Terrence described his new understanding of the long history of police brutality in the lives of black people as powerful learning. It provided him with the motivation to persist and excel academically. Recognizing that such consciousness about inequality could both deepen their students’ academic motivation and ability to resist racial injustice, each school in our study used different practices to create spaces within students’ everyday schoolwork to facilitate learning about race inequality.

At Leadership High School, for example, 11th- and 12th-grade students participated in a semester-long English seminar focused on the black experience (another was offered on the Latino experience). The seminars created a space within school for students to learn about issues of race and racial identity and better understand how racial inequity works systemically and in their own lives. In the Black Experience seminar, students read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me (2015), a book that analyzes how black bodies are treated in the United States. After reading the book, the students discussed the underlying mindsets and systemic forces that contributed to the disregard for black bodies during slavery and continue to contribute to the persistent disregard for these bodies today. For most students in the class, who are navigating society in black skin, this conversation contributes to their understanding of their personal experiences with racial inequity.

Schools in our study also make time to discuss racial inequity that students see on the news, in social media, and in their communities. Following a series of protests in the community as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, the principal asked her faculty to allot time during morning advisory for students to discuss and reflect on the following three questions:

• What systemic issues are in place in Baltimore that could have led to the riots?
• What do you think Baltimore’s response should be to the riots? What should the governor’s response be? What should the federal response be?
• What action steps do you think we must take as a society to address police brutality in the United States?

In this and other instances, the conversations were not a part of the intended schedule, yet educators recognized the importance of these events in students’ lives and took advantage of the opportunity to develop students’ critical consciousness. To truly integrate critical consciousness development into the work of school, schools need to be prepared to fold in these conversations spontaneously when the need arises.

#3. Teach students how to take action.

When people understand the social, economic, and political forces threatening their communities, they’re more likely to engage in activities that challenge those forces (Ginwright, 2010). In a third school in our study, Community Academy, the humanities curriculum introduced students to historical and contemporary methods for resistance.

In a 9th-grade lesson on apartheid in South Africa, for example, students discussed the differences between civil disobedience and militant resistance and debated their respective effectiveness in social change efforts:

        Teacher:   OK, the setting is 1961. The Sharpeville massacre just happened. You’re a member of the African National Congress, and you have to decide what to do.

       Student 1:   I said we should do militant resistance because [the protesters] tried to be peaceful, and it didn’t work.

       Student 2:   My opinion is militant resistance. [The protesters] really touched the government on some basics like shutting off their power plant or attacking government buildings and power stations. But they were avoiding killing people. I feel like that’s important because it was like sending the government a warning and getting their point across by hurting what the government really needed.

       Student 3:   I disagree because they’re not going to listen to you if you’re not peaceful.

       Student 2:   Well, I’m not saying violence is the key, but, in this case, it really was. You have to fight fire with fire on this one. [The police] was treating [the protesters] all unfair. And when they marched peacefully, [the police] was like, “We don’t care.” They spit in their face.

       Student 4:   I disagree because either way everyone dies, and that doesn’t solve anything.

In this lesson, students were learning how resistance happens, as well as the possible implications of different types of resistance. Such lessons position students to act against inequity in thoughtful and strategic ways. For example, as a part of the Black Lives Matter movement, numerous students at Community Academy participated in a citywide walkout and protest. One student, Missy, clearly linked this experience to her learning about different types of social action in humanities class. As she explained:

First I was like, I don’t know what me marching out here is gonna do ’cause they can’t personally hear what I want to say. But like we learned in humanities, civil disobedience will actually get us to where we want to be if we do it without violence and with words.

Through such instruction, Community Academy shows students how to resist in ways that overcome racism as a barrier to success and that have positive long-term outcomes for both individuals and communities. Scholars suggest that understanding adaptive strategies of resistance leads students to identify academic achievement as part of a collective struggle (Carter, 2008).

Empowered to achieve

A robust body of scholarship makes clear that disparities in academic learning outcomes between black students and peers from other racial groups are directly linked to a wide array of structural injustices in the United States against the black community. These include biased housing policies, gaps in economic opportunities, the over-incarceration of black men and women, rampant police brutality, and the unequal allocation of resources to schools (Carter & Welner, 2013). As educators, we cannot claim to be concerned with closing academic gaps without taking seriously the question of how to give black students the language and skills they need to understand the social conditions working against them.

Nor can we ignore the profound social change and academic benefits of nurturing students’ critical consciousness. Through providing a framework and a language for analysis, making space to talk about inequity, and teaching students how to take action, schools can integrate students’ sociopolitical realities into their ongoing work and contribute to critical consciousness development.

At the end of his interview, Terrence shared something he claimed he had never told anyone before.  “This project changed me,” he said. His reaction isn’t just the isolated narrative of one black student. It’s reflective of the transformative possibilities of committing to critical consciousness development in schools.

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Cammarota, J. (2007). A social justice approach to achievement: Guiding Latina/o students toward educational attainment with a challenging, socially relevant curriculum. Equity & Excellence in Education, 40 (1), 87-96.

Carter, D.J. (2008). Cultivating a critical race consciousness for African-American school success. Educational Foundations, 22 (1-2), 11-28.

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Coates, T. (2015). Between the world and me. New York, NY: Penguin Random House.

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O’Connor, C. (1997). Dispositions toward collective struggle and educational resilience in the inner city: A case analysis of six African-American high school students. American Educational Research Journal, 34 (4), 593-629.

Rogers, J. & Terriquez, V. (2013). Learning to lead: The impact of youth organizing on the educational and civic trajectories of low-income youth. Los Angeles, CA: Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access.

Sanders, M.G. (1997). Overcoming obstacles: Academic achievement as a response to racism and discrimination. Journal of Negro Education, 66 (1), 83-93.

Watts, R., Diemer, M., & Voight, A. (2011). Critical consciousness: Current status and future directions. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 134, 43-57.

Watts, R., Griffith, D., & Abdul-Adil, J. (1999). Sociopolitical development as an antidote for oppression: Theory and action. American Journal of Community Psychology, 27, 255-272.

Originally published in February 2017 Phi Delta Kappan 98 (5), 18-23. © 2017 Phi Delta Kappa International. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Aaliyah El-Amin

AALIYAH EL-AMIN is a lecturer on education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Mass.

Daren Graves

Daren Graves is an associate professor at the Simmons School of Social Work, Simmons College, Boston, Mass.

Jamie Johannsen

Jamie Johannsen is an undergraduate research assistant at Boston University, Boston, Mass.

Jalene Tamerat

Jalene Tamerat is a doctoral student at Boston University, Boston, Mass.

Madora Soutter

Madora Soutter is an assistant professor in the Department of Education and Counseling at Villanova University, Villanova, PA.

Shelby Clark

Shelby Clark is senior research manager of Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA.

Saira Malhotra

Saira Malhotra is an undergraduate research assistant at Boston University, Boston, Mass.

Scott Seider

Scott Seider is an assistant professor of education at Boston University, Boston, Mass., and author of Character Compass: How Powerful School Culture Can Point Students Toward Success .

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6 Critical consciousness and praxis

• Published: May 2022
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Chapter 6 includes a synopsis of a constellation of transformative concepts such as critical consciousness, praxis, feminist politics and solidarity that the authors feel are essential to be aware of, but are either being suppressed or sidelined in mainstream education. Drawing from the work of Paulo Freire and his critique of the banking model education, as well as a host of liberatory feminist thinkers, the chapter highlights how education can be put at the service of freedom. It also offers an accessible explanation of the role that colonial power, race and heteropatriarchy have in contemporary systems of domination and exploitation. In addition the chapter provides a summary of how borders and nationalism continue to be used to divide, ‘Other’ and conquer, as well as the pivotal role of feminist ethics and dissent in challenging oppression.

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The Student News Site of Freedom High School

Defining Critical Consciousness and Its Importance in Education

Graphic from files.eric.ed.gov

This graphic explains the stages of Critical Consciousness: Problem Solving, Critical Thinking and Dialogue.

Zayna Jamil , Contributor June 9, 2022

To understand the world, one of the most important tools is Critical Consciousness (CC). CC is a theory founded by the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, that focuses on achieving in-depth knowledge of social, political and economic structures in society to solve real world problems. But where do we develop levels of CC from? The answer is education.

Growing up, students develop their own perspectives from experiences they have in the education system, which eventually channels their views on society. CC plays a large part in changing the understanding of young adults’ educational lives into something more than just learning. 

“Critical consciousness helps you to be able to see beyond your own personal experience and understand the diverse experiences that other people in the country have,” said Faiza Jamil, a Human Development Professor at Clemson University.

The key components of CC are dialogue, critical thinking and problem solving. 

Dialogue creates connections between unheard voices, which leads to the ability to think critically. Critical thinking opens the door to problem solving; being able to find solutions to the current issues in today’s society. 

An important aspect of why CC in the educational classroom climate is essential is because of “open dialogue”. 

“Because we are facing problems in today’s world, we need that open dialogue,” said Zachary Barnisky, FHS social sciences teacher.

Dialogue in CC forms the positive connections between people, which create the driving force behind the transformation of society. Without dialogue, interactions in a classroom would be meaningless. 

“[CC] creates more empathetic humans, because it allows for that understanding and dialogue; being willing to speak about it,” Barnisky said. 

CC with dialogue can have a strong emotional impact on student’s lives. Speaking about the experiences among students and building a critical conscious environment gives opportunity for them to use their voices for social change. 

The use of dialogue makes critical thinking the common ground among students and teachers in a classroom. Classrooms engaging in critical thought enable students and teachers to effectively analyze the institutions around them and how they impact the way education is taught.

Using CC as a tool for engaging in critical discussions in schools also gives teachers a way to expand on the curriculum, putting in their own perspectives on the units they teach. This develops more critical thought, which eventually leads to engagement within classrooms. 

“Having only surface level of knowledge on anything only allows for surface level thinking, not critical thinking,” said Christina Farello, FHS English teacher. 

Analyzing curriculum based work from the ordinary perspective only enables surface level thinking, but giving the chance for more elaborate thought is how critical thinking gets built.

Involving CC in aspects of life cannot be done without the final stage, problem solving. Problem solving is the ultimate step towards impacting how the world functions, and involves all the overall CC concepts in one. 

With critical thinking and classroom discussions, problem solving is a productive way to find solutions to fix social and institutional issues prominent in society. Classrooms can use real-world examples to form a plan to reach levels of liberation for those who face injustices. 

CC is not a well known theory in people’s lives, but opens many doors to how humans gain knowledge on themselves and the world around them. 

Whether it comes from experience, education, morals or values, CC has ways of relating every aspect of life to each other, making it a tool for improvement for the next generations. 

The true power of CC is not the written word on a piece of paper; it’s how humans use its ideas to determine the outcomes of the future. 

Hi, I'm Zayna and I'm the Business/Marketing Editor for [Uncaged.]. I'm a junior and this is my second year working for [Uncaged.] and my third year doing...

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Developing Critical Consciousness through Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give

• Resources & Preparation
• Instructional Plan
• Related Resources

As part of their study of Angela Thomas’ novel The Hate U Give , students build background knowledge of the Black Lives Matter movement by listening to radio interviews and examining the network's official website. They then take an interest and knowledge survey to help select the topic for a short directed research project designed to establish context and depth around several aspects of the novel: double consciousness/codeswitching, the Black Panther movement, Tupac Shakur as activist, media portrayal of police violence, and the complexity of gang culture. Students share their learning at key moments during reading and discussion of the novel, followed by work with excerpts from James Baldwin’s essay “Letter from a Region in My Mind” and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Letter to My Son.”

Though this lesson focuses on The Hate U Give , a similar approach may be taken with titles such as All-American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely or How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon, with the specific social issues students research modified accordingly.

Featured Resources

From theory to practice.

In Teaching Reading with YA Literature: Complex Texts, Complex Lives , Jennifer Buehler offers a three-part conceptual framework for “an approach to teaching YA lit that promotes love of reading, improving skills in reading, and connecting reading to real-world contexts” (9). She identifies as the crucial elements, first, “social interactions [that] create more complex readings of YA literature,” second, books that are chosen “strategically” and “framed…in ways that satisfy the demands…of the latest standards movement,” and last, tasks that develop “the same reading and writing skills they would acquire” reading any other literature, but with a special focus on “connecting their reading to real-world contexts” and supporting them “with tools they can use to continue reading closely, actively, and critically on their own” (9).

This lesson, featuring a high-interest text with an engaging narrator and storyline interwoven with contemporary headlines, allows students to work together to generate deeper background knowledge necessary to set the novel in its complex contemporary context and combines careful reading of multiple, varied nonfiction texts with the centerpiece text of YA.

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

• 1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
• 2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.
• 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
• 4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
• 5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
• 7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.
• 8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.

Materials and Technology

• Copies of The Hate U Give
• Internet connected computers for Sessions One through Three and Five through Seven.
• Four sheets of butcher/chart paper (oriented long top to bottom) for the final session, with the words “a conscious,” “citizen,” “of this terrible,” “and beautiful world” written across one each
• Prior Knowledge about the Black Lives Matter Movement Handout
• Knowledge and Interest Survey
• Research Topics and Sources Page
• Discussion Questions for “Letter from a Region in My Mind” by James Baldwin
• Discussion Questions for “Letter to My Son” by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Cross-Text Analysis Handout
• Synthesis Chart
• Reflection Prompts

The official website of the Black Lives Matter network, the page offers information and resources “rooted in the experiences of Black people in this country who actively resist our dehumanization” and seek to respond “to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society.”

Baldwin's essay is the focus of close reading and discussion in Session Five. Provide print or online access to students through this link to The New Yorker.

Coates' essay is the focus of close reading and discussion in Sessions Six and Seven. Provide print or online access to students through this link to  The New Yorker.

Preparation

• Become familiar with the novel and all supplemental topics/readings. Be aware of your school and community standards for content and language when making the choice to teach the novel.
• Determine an approach and specific teaching objectives for the reading and discussion of the novel. This lesson addresses building and integrating prior knowledge and extending the novel with secondary pieces, but dicussion and instruction on characterization, pacing/plot development, conflict, and theme will enhance students' appreciation of the text.
• Establish or review ground rules for respectful discussion of political dialogue in class. Emphasize that the goal of the work in this lesson is to increase understanding and that hateful or derogatory speech of any sort is not acceptable. Remind students that a piece of art does not owe readers consideration of every perspective; its responsibility is to present its perspective. Readers, however, can and should bring multiple perspectives to interpreting the work as long as their perspectives are grounded in facts and are presented respectfully.
• Provide necessary background knowledge and support for students in the areas of research and presentation as this lesson assumes students are already familiar with basic research tasks such as notetaking, finding topics or themes across sources, and preparing a simple presentation of learning using a digital platform such as PowerPoint, Prezi, or Google Slides. Consult ReadWriteThink lessons such as Research Building Blocks: Notes, Quotes, and Fact Fragments , Research Building Blocks: "Organize This!" , and Research Building Blocks: "Cite Those Sources!" .
• Arrange for access to Internet connected computers for Sessions One through Three. Session One requires the ability to project videos and play sound files. In Sessions Two and Three, students will need to access digital resources as part of their research, and in Sessions Five through Seven they will access the essays online (optional). Alternatively, make copies of the necessary readings before Sessions Five through Seven.
• Test the playability of these media files on classroom equipment:  Tupac Inspired Angie Thomas’ New Book ,  'Black Lives Matter' Slogan Becomes A Bigger Movement , and  Black Lives Matter Founders Describe 'Paradigm Shift' In the Movement
• Form research groups based on student background knowledge and interest between Sessions One and Two.
• Post students’ research projects on an accessible space such a class website, wiki, or learning management system Between Sessions Three and Four.

Student Objectives

Students will

• identify key goals and beliefs of the Black Lives Matter movement
• build background knowledge on a selected topic using a guided research model
• apply knowledge in formal and informal ways through discussion
• read closely and analyze complex nonfiction related to the novel
• synthesize their understanding of the core and supplemental texts

Session One: Introducing the Novel and Research Topics

• Begin the lesson by explaining to students that Angie Thomas wrote the book The Hate U Give after being moved by the Black Lives Movement and that they will be learning more about it in this session. Project the first minute of the video “ Tupac Inspired Angie Thomas’ New Book ” to familiarize them with the author and the basic subject of the book.
• Distribute the Prior Knowledge about the Black Lives Matter Movement handout and ask students to write down what they know and understand about the Black Lives Matter movement in response to the prompt on the top half of the page. They might consider what they know about its origins, purposes, and reception in the world.
• After students have time to think and write, direct them to share what they know with a few other students around them. Listen for misconceptions and oversimplifications of understanding and address them through the work of this session.
• Prepare to play the two audioclips:  'Black Lives Matter' Slogan Becomes A Bigger Movement and Black Lives Matter Founders Describe 'Paradigm Shift' In the Movement . Preface the audioclips by saying that students’ job is to listen for new information and perspectives that they will write down on the bottom half of the Prior Knowledge about the Black Lives Matter Movement handout .
• During the second audioclip, consider projecting the page from which the audio plays so students can see the faces of the activists they are hearing.
• After students have time to record their thoughts on the second half of their  Prior Knowledge about the Black Lives Matter Movement handout , facilitate a discussion of the social problems and specific events that precipitated the Black Lives Matter movement, its philosophy and goals, and the controversies associated with it. The goal here is not to have an exhaustive discussion of the movement or to debate its ncessity or effectiveness, but rather to come to an understanding of its origin and goals.
• At an appropriate time in the conversation, project the Black Lives Matter About page as well as the organization’s page of Guiding Principles to deepen students’ understanding of the movement and the beliefs associated with it. Alternatively, allow students to explore the page on their own and to share what they learned with the class.
• With a few minutes left in the session, explain that as they read The Hate U Give , they will draw on what they already know and what they just learned about the Black Lives Matter movement, and that other background knowledge will be useful as well.
• Double consciousness, codeswitching, and living multiple identities
• The Black Panther Party
• Tupac Shakur as activist
• Media coverage of fatal police shootings
• The complexities of gang culture/leaving a gang
• Students should indicate their level of background knowledge for each, and they should mark the “Star column” for topics that are of special interest to them. Explain to students that the goals here are for every topic to get covered and for students to get to choose what is of interest to them. Ask for their understanding if not everyone gets his or her first choice in topics.
• Collect the Knowledge and Interest Surveys and form groups for research in the next session.

Sessions Two and Three: Research, Notetaking, and Presentation Preparation

• Remind students of the work from the previous session and explain that in these two flexibly divided sessions, they will be meeting with their group to discuss a research plan, doing preliminary research, and thinking about how they will share their learning. The time given to students need not be strictly divided, but suggest to students that they devote roughly one session to reading and organizing information and another to preparing the presentation and sharing the link to/file of the presentation.
• Explain that by the end of Session Three, each group needs to create a digital presentation of their learning using a platform such as PowerPoint, Prezi, or Google Slides and to share the file or link so that other students may access it. Point out that they will not be sharing the presentation formally, but they may want to refer to it when they share during the novel and they want other students to be able to benefit from their learning when they look at the presentation file on their own.
• Explain that the presentation file should include the name of the topic, the group members’ names, key subtopics and information, and a slide of Works Cited/references.
• Post or project the groups and members and direct students to the Research Topics and Sources Page .
• Give students time to read and take notes on their topic; direct students to the ReadWriteThink Notetaker tool to help support the research process.
• After they take notes, students should work together to create the presentation slides and share a link to their presentations, or the file itself, depending on the format students choose to use.
• Before Session Four, make sure all the presentation files are easily accessible to students in a centralized location such as a class wiki, webpage, or learning management system.

Session Four: Reading the Novel and Sharing Background Knowledge

• Begin the session by displaying for students the link or site at which they can find their classmates’ research presentations when they are interested in learning more. Ask each group to give a one- to two-minute overview of what they learned.
• Black Panther Party (Ch 3, the family’s complex political and social alliances to mainstream Christianity, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panthers; Ch 10, Maverick’s assertion that the Panthers educated and empowered; Ch 14, Hailey unfollows Starr’s social media for posts about Black Panthers)
• Double consciousness, code-switching, identity negotiation (Ch 5, Starr talks about changing language use at school; Ch  13, the family discusses what it would mean to move to the suburbs; Ch 17, Starr’s white boyfriend accuses her of hiding parts of her life from him)
• Tupac Shakur and his activism: (Ch 1, Khalil explains how “Tupac was the truth”; Ch 10, the family listens to Tupac and discusses how his work uplifted people of color; Ch 12, Starr watches the video of Tupac explaining the meaning behind T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E.)
• Media coverage of fatal shootings by police (Ch 7, Khalil is named by news reporters and labeled a “suspected drug dealer”; Ch 14, Officer 115’s father is interviewed on the news; Ch 20, Hailey repeats what she had heard on the news about Khalil)
• Complexities of gang culture/difficulty of leaving a gang (Ch 8, Starr questions Khalil’s affiliation with the King Lords; Ch 10, Maverick explains when he wanted out of the King Lords and begins helping DeVante; Ch 15, Starr explains what DeVante told her about Khalil’s motivations in selling drugs)

Session Five: Reading James Baldwin

• Explain to students that for the next few sessions, they will be reading and discussing important texts by African-American authors whose ideas will connect and resonate with The Hate U Give : first, excerpts from James Baldwin’s essay “ Letter from a Region in My Mind ,” and then parts of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “ Letter to My Son ,” which is itself part of the larger work Between the World and Me .
• Direct students to or distribute print copies of “ Letter from a Region in My Mind ” as well as copies of the Discussion Questions for “Letter from a Region in My Mind.”
• Go over the background information at the top of the discussion questions .
• For each section, first preview the questions as a class before reading the text aloud, stopping at whatever points students are interested in talking about.
• At the end of each section, stop to discuss the questions, going back to the text as necessary to discuss evidence, particularly evidence across multiple paragraphs or even sections of the essay. Consider varying the pattern for reading and answering among sections, sometimes answering as a full class, sometimes independently first and then in pairs, sometimes in small groups.
• Close the lesson by asking students to talk in small groups and/or write reflectively about the connections they see between Baldwin’s world and ideas from 1962 and the events and characters from The Hate U Give .

Sessions Six and Seven: Reading Ta-Nehisi Coates

• Direct students to or provide copies of “ Letter to My Son ,” pointing out that the epigraph of the text is by James Baldwin, signaling to readers that Coates is participating in the same conversation as he was, but decades later. Also point out the epistolary nature of the work, with the author addressing his son in the form of a letter.
• Explain that because of the length and complexity of the essay and its ideas, students will be reading and discussing it over two sessions, stopping at and picking up from wherever they get by the end of Session Six.
• Distribute copies of the Discussion Questions for “Letter to My Son,” and as with the previous text, preview the questions to focus students’ attention on key ideas.
• Read each section, stopping at whatever points students are interested in discussing. Stop to discuss the questions, promoting conversation among students and varying the pattern as in Session Five.
• At the end of Session Seven, read the closing question and ask students to think and write independently in preparation for the closing activity in Session Eight. What does it mean to be “a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world”? How might this phase describe what happened to Starr in the book? How might this be a process that each of them is living, as well?

Session Eight: Synthesizing and Reflecting

• Give students time to share informally in small groups or as a class what they thought and wrote about in response to the phrase “a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world.”
• Then distribute copies of the Cross-Text Analysis Chart and ask students to form groups in which they find evidence for each of these words or phrases being significant to understanding Starr’s story. In addition, they should make reference to the Baldwin and Coates readings, as well as the research that they and their peers completed earlier in the lesson.
• While students are taking notes on their Cross-Text Analysis Charts , post the prepared butcher paper/chart paper around the room, with one space each for them to share their ideas about being “a conscious” “citizen” “of this terrible” “and beautiful world.”
• Give students time to post their evidence and discussion and then to examine and reflect on the thinking from other groups.
• For homework, distribute a copy of the Synthesis Chart and ask students to review all the texts and consider the most important ideas from each, as well as from their own lives. They should use the spaces in the four corners to share key quotes and ideas from The Hate U Give , the Baldwin essay , the Coates essay , and their own life experiences. Then, in the center square, they should synthesize what it means to be in the process of becoming a “conscious citizen of this terrible, wonderful world.”
• Ask students to continue developing their thinking in the last session into an essay in which they analyze Starr’s character in terms of Coates’ language.
• Invite students to read other books that address violence against African-Americans such as How it Went Down or All-American Boys and compare their approaches and messages.

Student Assessment / Reflections

Assessment and reflection for this lesson is less about feedback on development of specific measurable skills and is instead more centered on what and how students are thinking about the issues in and around the novel. The following ideas support students in thinking across texts and considering how their own lives might be influenced by what they read.

• Provide written feedback on groups’ research projects, suggesting changes or additions to enhance their usefulness to other groups.
• Collect and respond to the groups’ Cross-Text Analysis Charts and provide feedback on the degree to which they interpreted Starr’s character in terms of Coates’ language and using the other source material as well.
• Evaluate students’ Synthesis Charts for the strength of the commentary in the center square and the aptness of the ideas and quotes in the surrounding boxes.
• Invite students to apply more extensively Coates’ phrase to their own personal, moral, and political development. In what ways are they becoming such a citizen? How has study of this books and topic changed them? How might they become more conscious in the future?
• After students complete the lesson, invite them to complete these Reflection Prompts to look back on what they have learned and what they would still like to learn.
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The Multifaceted Significance of “The Color Purple” in Literature and Society

This essay about Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” examines the novel’s impact on literature and society. It highlights the story of Celie, an African American woman who overcomes severe abuse and oppression through resilience and empowerment. The essay discusses key themes such as race, gender, class, spirituality, and sexuality, and the importance of female support networks in the characters’ lives. It also addresses Walker’s use of African American Vernacular English to convey authenticity. The essay notes the novel’s adaptations into film and musical, which have broadened its influence and kept its themes relevant. Overall, it celebrates the novel’s lasting significance and Alice Walker’s literary legacy.

How it works

Alice Walker’s magnum opus, “The Color Purple,” stands as an emblematic tome of American literature, etching an indelible imprint on the consciousness of readers and critics alike since its inception in 1982. Garnering both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, this novel plumbs the depths of the African American female experience in the early 20th-century Southern milieu, unfurling themes of subjugation, fortitude, and reclamation. Through its poignant narrative and intricately etched personages, “The Color Purple” not only probes into the realms of race and gender but also proffers a profound commentary on the human odyssey.

At its nucleus lies Celie, a fledgling African American ingénue ensnared in the throes of egregious maltreatment and adversity from her nascent years. Her chronicle unfolds through a series of missives addressed to the Divine and later to her sibling, Nettie. This epistolary modality affords readers an intimate ingress into Celie’s cogitations and sentiments, rendering her voyage toward self-actualization and emancipation profoundly personal and poignant. Through Celie’s ocular organs, the reader is privy to the brutality inflicted by her patriarchal progenitor, who perpetrates acts of violation upon her, and her spouse, who perpetuates the vicious cycle of maltreatment. Yet, notwithstanding these harrowing vicissitudes, Celie’s narrative emerges as a testament to tenacity and optimism.

Walker’s opus assumes monumental significance for its unflinching delineation of the confluence of race, gender, and socioeconomic strata. The African American femmes within “The Color Purple” shoulder a trifecta of burdens: they are subjugated by virtue of their racial identity, their femininity, and their economic status. Nevertheless, the narrative also illuminates their mettle and camaraderie. Figures such as Sofia and Shug Avery wield catalytic influence upon Celie’s metamorphosis. Sofia’s defiance against her spousal oppressor and the racial injustices she confronts, coupled with Shug’s autonomous ethos and sensuality, catalyze Celie’s epiphany. These interrelationships underscore the pivotal role of feminine support networks in surmounting oppression.

Moreover, “The Color Purple” delves profoundly into the realms of spirituality and personal evolution. Initially, Celie’s epistles to the Divine bespeak her sense of powerlessness and isolation. However, as she traverses her odyssey, her spirituality undergoes a metamorphosis, evolving into a more nuanced and individualistic paradigm. The transition from her communiqués with the Divine to her missives to Nettie heralds Celie’s burgeoning sense of self-worth and self-determination. By the denouement, Celie’s conception of the Divine transmutes from a remote, patriarchal entity to a more proximate and all-encompassing presence, mirroring her evolution from victimhood to agency.

A pivotal facet of “The Color Purple” is its interrogation of sexuality and identity. The narrative interrogates conventional gender norms and heteronormative anticipations through its portrayal of Celie’s liaison with Shug. Their bond transcends the bounds of platonic camaraderie, endowing Celie with a sense of amour and acceptance hitherto unattained. This liaison not only aids Celie in reclaiming sovereignty over her corporeal form and sensuality but also subverts the patriarchal edifices that have long constrained her. Walker’s unvarnished depiction of homoerotic love constituted a groundbreaking undertaking at the epoch of the novel’s advent and persists as a substantive contribution to LGBTQ literature.

Furthermore, alongside its thematic profundity, “The Color Purple” is lauded for its linguistic finesse. Walker adeptly employs African American Vernacular English (AAVE) to authentically articulate her personages’ voices and ordeals. This linguistic preference not only lends verisimilitude to the narrative but also underscores the cultural and historical ambiance of the tale. The utilization of AAVE serves as a potent instrument for narration, enabling Walker to limn the tenacity and vivacity of African American culture notwithstanding systemic subjugation.

“The Color Purple” has engendered reverberations beyond the precincts of literature. Its translation into a triumphant cinematic rendition helmed by Steven Spielberg in 1985, and subsequently into a Tony Award-winning musical, expanded the narrative’s purview to a broader audience. These adaptations have perpetuated the relevance of the novel’s themes, inciting dialogues concerning race, gender, and equity within contemporary society. Furthermore, the perennial popularity and critical acclaim accorded to the novel have cemented Alice Walker’s status as a pivotal luminary within American letters.

In summation, “The Color Purple” emerges as a seminal oeuvre that continues to resonate with readers by dint of its trenchant exploration of intricate themes and its riveting narrative. Alice Walker’s portrayal of Celie’s sojourn from oppression to emancipation serves as a testament to the indomitability of the human spirit and the transformative potency of love and camaraderie. The novel’s imprint upon literature and society accentuates its status as a work that not only mirrors the travails of African American femmes but also extols their fortitude and capacity for metamorphosis. Remember, this exposition serves as a point of departure for reflection and further inquiry. For bespoke guidance and to ensure your exposition adheres to all scholarly criteria, contemplate enlisting the aid of professionals at EduBirdie.

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The Multifaceted Significance of "The Color Purple" in Literature and Society. (2024, Jun 17). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/the-multifaceted-significance-of-the-color-purple-in-literature-and-society/

"The Multifaceted Significance of "The Color Purple" in Literature and Society." PapersOwl.com , 17 Jun 2024, https://papersowl.com/examples/the-multifaceted-significance-of-the-color-purple-in-literature-and-society/

PapersOwl.com. (2024). The Multifaceted Significance of "The Color Purple" in Literature and Society . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-multifaceted-significance-of-the-color-purple-in-literature-and-society/ [Accessed: 17 Jun. 2024]

"The Multifaceted Significance of "The Color Purple" in Literature and Society." PapersOwl.com, Jun 17, 2024. Accessed June 17, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/the-multifaceted-significance-of-the-color-purple-in-literature-and-society/

"The Multifaceted Significance of "The Color Purple" in Literature and Society," PapersOwl.com , 17-Jun-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-multifaceted-significance-of-the-color-purple-in-literature-and-society/. [Accessed: 17-Jun-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2024). The Multifaceted Significance of "The Color Purple" in Literature and Society . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-multifaceted-significance-of-the-color-purple-in-literature-and-society/ [Accessed: 17-Jun-2024]

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