Critical consciousness in late adolescence: Understanding if, how, and why youth act

Abstract

Through critical consciousness, adolescents can alter oppressive social and political systems and experience liberation (Watts, Diemer, & Voight, 2011). More research is needed to understand how adolescents experience this process so that programming can better support them. We analyzed semi-structured interviews (N = 50; M_age = 16.85; 56% female) and quantitative questionnaire data (N = 1578; M_age = 16.87; 51% female) to explore how adolescents engage in critical consciousness in their daily lives. Qualitatively, we identified what instigated adolescents' awareness of inequalities, how they responded to inequalities, and what informed their responses. Quantitative results indicated that discrimination was positively associated with action, but higher critical reflection did not mediate this association. Research and programming could better support adolescents' critical consciousness development by attending to the diverse ways that they conceptualize and respond to inequalities and by targeting personal and contextual factors that inform this process.

Introduction

Civically engaged adolescents—those whose beliefs and behaviors support community and societal wellbeing—have higher levels of physical, mental, and educational wellbeing than less civically engaged adolescents (Ballard, Hoyt, & Pachucki, 2019; Youniss & Levine, 2009). Consequently, civic engagement has been conceptually and empirically linked to positive youth development, or the presence of mutually beneficial person↔context relations (Lerner et al., 2005; Lerner, Lerner, Bowers, & Geldhof, 2015). Although adolescents may not experience mutually beneficial relations across all levels of their context (e.g., Tyler, Geldhof, Black, & Bowers, 2019), they are considered to be experiencing positive development when these relations support their physical, cognitive, and emotional needs and benefit civil society (Lerner, 2007).

Oppressive social and political systems represent contextual factors that hinder youths' potential to experience positive development (Spencer & Spencer, 2014; Velez & Spencer, 2018). Oppression occurs when one group of people abuses power to benefit themselves at the expense of another group. Marginalization is a form of oppression that denies a group of people the ability to participate fully in social, economic, and political life (Young, 2014). Racism, nativism, heterosexism, and classism are examples of marginalizing systems in the U.S. These contexts prevent positive development because they deny youth who are marginalized basic safety and deny all youth access to their humanity (Freire, 1970; Jemal, 2017). Despite the presence of oppression in young people's lives, oppressive systems have not been fully integrated into models of positive youth development (for a critique see Ginwright & Cammarota, 2002; Ginwright & James, 2002; Watts & Flanagan, 2007). Work in this field may benefit from explicitly incorporating oppression into conceptualizations of adaptive development (Clonan-Roy, Jacobs, & Nakkula, 2016; Tyler et al., 2019). Linking theories of critical consciousness development to the positive youth development literature provides one way to do so (Hershberg, Johnson, DeSouza, Hunter, & Zaff, 2015).

Critical consciousness is a form of civic engagement explicitly focused on liberation and healing from oppression (Watts et al., 2011). More specifically, critical consciousness refers to the dynamic process that people engage in when they analyze inequalities (i.e., critical reflection), develop sociopolitical efficacy and a commitment to promoting change (i.e., critical motivation), and behave in ways that address inequalities (i.e., critical action; Diemer, Rapa, Voight, & McWhirter, 2016; Freire, 1970). Through critical consciousness, adolescents can promote mutually beneficial person↔context relations by changing the way that systems structure their experiences and the experiences of others.

Critical consciousness is an established and fast-growing field (Heberle, Rapa, & Farago, 2020), yet more research is needed to understand how this process unfolds and influences adolescent development. In this study, we explore how adolescents engage in critical consciousness using a theoretical lens informed by the Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST; Spencer, Dupree, & Hartmann, 1997) and Sociopolitical Development (SPD) theory (Watts & Flanagan, 2007; Watts & Guessous, 2006). More specifically, we explore what instigates an awareness of inequalities, what motivates critical action, how critical action manifests, and various factors that might be connected with action. In doing so, we aim to highlight the ways critical consciousness can be better recognized and supported by those interested in promoting positive youth development and youth-driven social change.