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Critical consciousness refers to the ability to analyze and take action against oppressive social forces shaping society. This longitudinal, mixed methods study compared the critical consciousness development of adolescents of color (n = 453) attending two sets of high schools featuring schooling models that represent "opposing" approaches to education. The participating adolescents were 13-15 years old at the start of the study; the majority identified as African American or Latinx; and nearly 80% came from low-SES households. They attended public charter high schools located in five different northeastern cities. Analyses of longitudinal survey data revealed that the adolescents attending these two sets of high schools demonstrated greater rates of growth on different dimensions of critical consciousness over their four years of high school. Qualitative interviews with youth attending these two sets of schools (n = 70) offered evidence of the long-theorized relationship between critical consciousness and problem-posing education, but also that effective practices supporting youth critical consciousness can be found embedded in schools featuring a broader range of pedagogies. These findings offer support for ethnic studies and action civics programming that several state departments of education have recently added to secondary school curricula.

This mixed-methods, longitudinal study utilized survey data from a sample of (primarily) Black and Latinx adolescents' (n = 643) and qualitative interviews with a subset of adolescents (n = 39) to consider changes in adolescents' beliefs about poverty and economic inequality throughout high school as well as the sources of their beliefs. Adolescents demonstrated significant, linear growth in their beliefs that poverty was caused by structural factors. This finding resonated with analyses of four waves of qualitative interviews in which a majority of participating adolescents shifted from citing individualistic causes to structural causes in their explanations of economic inequality and the opportunity structure in the United States. In explaining the sources of these beliefs, participating adolescents most frequently cited personal experiences, school-related experiences, and social media.

Research has found that directly teaching students to question positively affects academic outcomes. Although theoretically questioning is believed to foster numerous "noncognitive" outcomes, relatively few studies have considered the impact of direct instruction in questioning on students' curiosity and related motivational constructs. The present quasi-experimental study investigated the impact of a student question-brainstorming intervention (the Question Formulation Technique; QFT) on adolescents' curiosity, cognitive school engagement, and self-efficacy (achievement efficacy and self-regulatory school efficacy) over one school year. Multiple-group structural equation path modeling was utilized to consider the impact of the intervention on these constructs, while accounting for the interrelationships among the variables. Results indicated a positive impact of the QFT on students' curiosity, but a negative impact on students' self-regulatory for self-efficacy learning and cognitive engagement. Limitations and implications for educators are discussed.

What does the development of a young person's political agency look like, and what role can schools play in this process? The authors profile Blackstone Academy, where administrators integrate social activism, community service, and other service-learning projects into the curriculum to help students develop leadership skills and confidence. The authors also discuss how other schools might imitate these kinds of projects to help their own students feel empowered.

Critical consciousness, the process by which individuals come to understand, analyze, and take action against systems of oppression, is associated with several positive youth outcomes. However, little research has considered how the core components of critical consciousness (critical reflection, political agency, critical action) are associated with academic achievement. The present study explored the extent to which the developing critical consciousness of adolescents of color (N = 364) over 4 years of high school predicted academic achievement, as measured by grade point average (GPA) and the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). Results demonstrated that adolescents' critical reflection and critical action intercepts predicted SAT scores whereas critical reflection and critical action slopes predicted GPAs. Political agency was not predictive of either academic outcome.

Sociopolitical consciousness refers to an individual's ability to critically analyze the political, economic, and social forces shaping society and one's status in it. A growing body of scholarship reports that high levels of sociopolitical consciousness are predictive in marginalized adolescents of a number of key outcomes including resilience and civic engagement. The present study explored the role that urban secondary schools can play in fostering adolescents' sociopolitical consciousness through a longitudinal, mixed methods investigation of more than 400 adolescents attending "progressive" and "no excuses" charter high schools. Analyses revealed that, on average, students attending progressive high schools demonstrated sizeable shifts in their sociopolitical consciousness of racial inequality, and students attending no excuses high schools demonstrated sizeable shifts in their sociopolitical consciousness of social class inequality. Qualitative interviews with participating students offered insight into the curriculum, programming, and practices that these youth perceived as contributing to these differences in their sociopolitical consciousness.

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. To explore this approach, the authors studied five urban schools that include critical consciousness development in their mission. Three strategies emerged as promising practices that schools can use to develop black students' critical consciousness and harness the connection between critical consciousness and student achievement. They include teaching students the language of inequality, creating space to interrogate racism, and teaching students how to take action.

Critical consciousness refers to the ways in which individuals come to understand and challenge oppressive social forces. Philosopher-educator Paulo Freire argued that critical curiosity--an eagerness to learn more about and develop a deep understanding of issues of social justice--serves as an important catalyst to critical consciousness development. Yet, relatively little scholarship has considered how to foster critical curiosity in adolescents. The present qualitative study analyzed semi-structured interviews with 60 adolescents attending five Northeastern urban charter high schools with mission statements focused on fostering students' engagement in social action. Specifically, the study considered these students' perceptions of the impact of their respective schools' social engagement programming upon their critical curiosity. The interviews were analyzed using a flexible inductive/deductive approach drawn from the thematic analysis approach to qualitative analysis. The findings of this study indicate that students had a variety of conceptions of what stimulates their critical curiosity, including relevance, exposure to new perspectives, and receiving new, surprising information. Alignment with Freire's conceptions of critical curiosity and current curiosity scholarship, implications for educators, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

In this article, the authors describe the experiences of five cadets and college students serving as camp leaders for the United States Air Force Academy's (USAFA) Leaders of Character Camp (LoCC). Additionally, they describe the work in which three other universities are engaged to adapt the LoCC model to their own university contexts. In so doing, the authors seek to offer insights into how such camp experiences foster college students' leadership and character and to highlight some of the efforts to expand the reach of such experiences across the nation.

This mixed-methods study considered the effects of ethical philosophy programming at a high-performing, high-poverty urban high school upon the academic integrity of participating adolescents ("n" = 279). Analyses of pre-post survey data revealed that participating adolescents reported significantly higher levels of academic integrity than their peers at a matched comparison school. Field notes from observations of ethical philosophy lessons and qualitative interviews with participating students revealed that this programming offered students frequent opportunities to practice moral reasoning and introduced philosophical perspectives that influenced students' conception of and commitment to academic integrity. (Contains 2 tables and 3 footnotes.)

This mixed methods study investigated the impact of learning about homelessness on the civic development of privileged adolescents. Pre-post surveys, classroom observations, and qualitative interviews revealed that the participating adolescents developed a more complex understanding of the factors that contribute to homelessness; however, this deeper understanding of homelessness was not accompanied by a reconfiguring of participants' beliefs about America's opportunity structure. Instead, this study's privileged adolescents defended their own positions within the existing class structure by invoking legitimizing, and naturalizing ideological frames. This resistance to social justice content impeded participating teens' development of civic responsibility for fellow citizens contending with poverty and homelessness. (Contains 3 notes and 4 tables.)

In this study, I investigate the beliefs of privileged adolescents about their obligations to those contending with hunger and poverty as well as the impact of "trolley problems" upon these adolescents' beliefs. To consider the attitudes of the young adults in this study, I draw upon their student writing from a course on social issues as well as survey and interview data collected at the start and conclusion of this course. I found that, for the privileged adolescents in this study, their consideration of a particular trolley problem actually decreased their sense of responsibility for countries and individuals contending with hunger and poverty. (Contains 1 table and 3 notes.)

Objectives: A handful of studies have previously reported on positive associations between critical consciousness and academic achievement for youth of color. The present study contributes to this scholarship by investigating how the association between critical consciousness and academic achievement varies for youth (N = 179) across different content areas in school, as well as whether this association differs for youth from different racial–ethnic groups. Method: For three different measures of critical consciousness, we fit single-level ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models to investigate their relationship to students' academic achievement in four different subject areas. We also included moderation models to investigate whether the relation between critical consciousness and academic achievement differed for students of color versus White students. Results: OLS regression analyses revealed that different components of critical consciousness differentially predicted students' academic achievement in different subject areas. Additionally, moderation analyses suggest that these associations between critical consciousness and academic achievement are stronger for students of color than White students. Conclusions: These findings may encourage more K–12 schools and school systems to adopt culturally relevant and sustaining curriculum (such as ethnic studies coursework) that offer more opportunities for youth from both dominant and marginalized identity groups to learn about issues of power, oppression, and resistance to oppression. Public Significance Statement: More than 30 states in the United States have recently adopted or introduced laws that limit teaching in K–12 schools about race and racism. The present study finds that, in a racially diverse sample of high school students, young people's ability to understand and analyze racism was significantly associated with higher levels of academic achievement in several subject areas, and that these associations were particularly strong for high school students of color. These results may encourage more K–12 schools to adopt culturally relevant and sustaining curriculum that offer opportunities for youth to learn about issues of power, oppression, and resistance to oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]