Unraveling the Complexity of Critical Consciousness, Political Efficacy, and Political Action Among Marginalized Adolescents

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141719/1/cdev12446.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141719/2/cdev12446_am.pd

Critical Consciousness in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review,Critical Assessment, and Recommendations for Future Research

Critical consciousness refers to an individual’s awareness of oppressive systemic forces in society, a sense of efficacy to work against oppression, and engagement in individual or collective action against oppression. In the past few decades, interest in critical consciousness as a resource that may promote thriving in marginalized people has grown tremendously. This article critically examines the results of a systematic review of 67 studies of critical consciousness in children and adolescents, published between 1998 and 2019. Across these studies, major themes included the role of socialization experiences, relationships, and context in the development of critical consciousness. In addition, critical consciousness was associated with a number of adaptive developmental outcomes, including career-related, civic, social–emotional, and academic outcomes—especially for marginalized youth. However, our analysis highlights several critical gaps in the literature. We highlight the need for further delineation of the impacts of parent and peer socialization on critical consciousness in specific developmental periods and for studying critical consciousness at multiple levels of the ecological system. We further note the dearth of rigorous experimental or quasi-experimental studies in the area of interventions to promote critical consciousness. In addition, we note that developmental questions—questions about the nature and function of critical consciousness over time—are largely unanswered in the literature, including questions about how critical consciousness manifests and develops during childhood. Leveraging the findings of our systematic review, we outline key next steps for this rapidly growing area of research

Clemson University’s Teacher Learning Progression Program: Personalized Advanced Credentials for Teachers

This chapter provides an overview of Clemson University\u27s Teacher Learning Progression program, which offers participating middle school science, technology, engineering, and/or mathematics (STEM) teachers with personalized advanced credentials. In contrast to typical professional development (PD) approaches, this program identifies individualized pathways for PD based on teachers\u27 unique interests and needs and offers PD options through the use of a “recommender system”—a system providing context-specific recommendations to guide teachers toward the identification of preferred PD pathways and content. In this chapter, the authors introduce the program and highlight (1) the data collection and instrumentation needed to make personalized PD recommendations, (2) the recommender system, and (3) the personalized advanced credential options. The authors also discuss lessons learned through initial stages of project implementation and consider future directions for the use of recommender systems to support teacher PD, considering both research and applied implications and settings

Out of This Stony Rubbish: Echoes of Ezekiel in T.S. Eliot\u27s \u3ci\u3eThe Waste Land\u3c/i\u3e

This essay explores T.S. Eliot\u27s The Waste Land in light of the poet-prophet connection—a connection which was of particular interest to T.S. Eliot himself. I argue that Eliot was aware of the poet-prophet connection early in his youth and that this awareness influenced and informed The Waste Land. I suggest also that Eliot takes up the themes and images of the biblical prophets, and of Ezekiel in particular, as a means to structure the poem, but more importantly, as one way of \u27‘controlling, or ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history \u27 (Eliot. \u27\u27\u27Ulysses,\u27 Order, and Myth, 177). Finally, I propose that Eliot himself, through The Waste Land, stands for readers as a poet-prophet, and thereby offers a way out of the desolation and despair that Eliot found to be so pervasive in the modern world