The Development of Critical Consciousness in Adolescents of Color Attending “Opposing” Schooling Models

Critical Reflection

One dimension of critical consciousness, critical reflection, refers to the ability to recognize and analyze forces of inequality such as racism and poverty. Freire (1970) posited that engaging in critical reflection was necessary for individuals to appropriately guide their critical action, and other scholars have reported as well that strong critical reflection skills can motivate and direct the social action in which young people engage (e.g., Diemer & Rapa, 2016; Hope et al., 2016). In terms of critical reflection about racism, the Center for Racial Justice Innovation (2017) offers a conceptual framework that defines racism in terms of its interpersonal and systemic dimensions. For adolescents of color, awareness of interpersonal racism entails recognizing that others are likely to define them negatively and see them only as members of a negatively valued group (Oyserman et al., 2001). Awareness of systemic racism entails recognition of how particular policies, laws, and cultural practices can privilege or obstruct the success of particular racial/ethnic groups over others (Gordon, 2013).

The extant scholarship suggests that youth demonstrate increased awareness of both types of racism as they move from early adolescence to late adolescence (e.g., Hughes & Bigler, 2011; McLoyd et al., 2009; Seider et al., 2019). Additionally, a recent study found that Black adolescents (n = 450) were significantly more likely to endorse systemic racism than interpersonal racism as a contributor to “race achievement gaps” between Black and White youth and that these adolescents’ attributions of systemic forms of racism increased between the 10th and 12th grade while their attribution of interpersonal forms of racism remained stable (Bañales et al., 2020). Other scholars report that youth of color develop, on average, deeper understandings of racism and racial discrimination than their White peers due, in large part, to their own experiences with racial discrimination as well as racial socialization practices from parents and other caregivers (Bigler et al., 2003; Brown et al., 2007; Seaton, 2010).

In terms of analyzing the causes of poverty, Americans typically offer either individualistic or systemic perspectives to account for differences between affluent and poor citizens (Bullock, 2006; Kluegel & Smith, 1986). A long-standing body of research has found that, on average, American children, adolescents, and adults cite individualistic factors as the primary causes of such differences (Flanagan et al., 2014; Kluegel & Smith, 1986). That said, scholars also report that, with age, adolescents demonstrate an increasing capacity to identify systemic factors that contribute to wealth and poverty (Halik & Webley, 2011; Seider et al., 2019). Scholars also report that adolescents from low-socioeconomic status (SES) families (Flanagan et al., 2014) and adolescents of color (Dalbert, 2001; Flanagan et al., 2014) are more likely than their high-SES and White peers to cite individualistic factors that contribute to poverty. One explanation for these latter findings can be found in system justification theory that posits individuals from marginalized groups may, paradoxically, possess a greater psychological motivation to attribute differences in people’s economic status to personal factors rather than societal flaws because doing so allows for greater optimism regarding one’s own economic mobility (Flanagan et al., 2014; Godfrey & Grayman, 2014; Jost et al., 2009). Another possible explanation is that youth from low-SES families and communities may be particularly likely to receive socialization messages about the meritocratic system in the United States from their families, schools, churches, and other institutions (Lardier et al., 2019).

Finally, given that the present study is investigating Black and Latinx adolescents developing critical reflection about both racism and poverty, it is worth noting that a small body of research has investigated youths’ intersectional awareness of these two systems of power (Curtin et al., 2015). Specifically, a handful of studies have found that both Black and White children are more likely to associate Black people with lower economic status than they are White people (Bigler et al., 2003; Elenbaas & Killen, 2016). Another study reported that, between 5 and 11 years old, Black, White, and Latinx children all become increasingly likely to attribute economic differences between different racial groups to racial discrimination (Elenbaas & Killen, 2017). Finally, analyses conducted with four waves of data from the present study found that although the Black and Latinx adolescents in the present study demonstrated positive, significant growth in their awareness of racism and poverty over their first 3 years of high school, there was a nonsignificant relationship between adolescents’ rates of change on these measures (Seider et al., 2019). In other words, there appeared to be no relationship between adolescents’ changing awareness of poverty and racism.

Critical Action

Critical action refers to engagement in events and activities intended to challenge oppressive forces and structures, and the unequal conditions they perpetuate (Watts et al., 2011). Engagement in such critical action in adolescence has been found to be positively correlated with a range of positive youth outcomes such as curiosity (Clark & Seider, 2020), literacy skills (Conner & Slattery, 2014), academic achievement (Seider, Clark, & Graves, 2020), career goals (Rapa et al., 2018), leadership skills (Nicholas et al., 2019), and resilience (Hope & Spencer, 2017). However, other researchers have noted that youths’ engagement in critical action can also be accompanied by emotional burdens such as exhaustion and burnout (DeAngelo et al., 2016).

Watts and Hipolito-Delgado (2015) parse critical action into three typologies: personal action, group action, and the mass action of social movements. Personal action describes the actions of a single individual to protest a policy or practice, whereas group action entails the collective actions of an organization or collective to stage a similar protest. Finally, the mass action of social movements entails the coordinated efforts of multiple groups and stakeholders to challenge collectively institutional practices or policies. Watts and Hipolito-Delgado (2015) characterize mass action as typically more impactful than group action, and group action as typically more impactful than personal action. Other scholars have distinguished young people’s “digital” critical action from (inter)personal and collective forms of critical action (Anyiwo et al., 2020).

Political Agency

Political agency refers to a belief in one’s ability to shape and change social and political systems (Beaumont, 2010). Political agency has been found to be a key predictor of important sociopolitical outcomes such as commitment to activism, social capital, and social trust (Beaumont, 2010; Wray-Lake & Flanagan, 2012). Young people with higher levels of political agency are also more engaged in their communities and schools, and less likely to use alcohol and drugs (Peterson et al., 2011). Other scholars report that youths’ political agency mediates the relationship between ecological supports (e.g., family, peer, school) and a number of developmental outcomes such as self-esteem, resilience, perceived school importance, and civic engagement (e.g., Christens & Peterson, 2012; Leath & Chavous, 2017; Zimmerman et al., 1999). As described in greater detail in the “Method” section below, the present study conceptualizes political agency as consisting of feelings that one can influence political systems (sociopolitical efficacy or control, Peterson et al., 2011) and that one should seek to influence political systems (social responsibility, Pancer et al., 2007). In so doing, we follow the lead of Diemer et al. (2017) who characterized this dimension of critical consciousness (also sometimes referred to as “critical motivation”) as the interest and agency one has to challenge oppression.

Praxis

In his writings on critical consciousness, Freire (1970) argued that an individual must be able to engage in both critical reflection and critical action in order to effectively challenge oppression, and he invoked the term praxis to describe this combination of reflection and action. In recent years, several studies have investigated the relationships between critical reflection, political agency, and critical action. Accordingly, several studies have found that youths’ critical reflection skills are predictive of their engagement in critical action (e.g., Bañales et al., 2020; Clark & Seider, 2020; Diemer & Rapa, 2016; Fernandez et al., 2018), and others have reported significant associations between political agency and critical action (e.g., Diemer & Rapa, 2016; Hope & Jagers, 2014; Nicholas et al., 2019). In short, a growing body of empirical research suggests that the relationships between the various dimensions of critical consciousness are bidirectional and mutually reinforcing.

Schools as Opportunity Structures

In their model of youth sociopolitical development, Watts and Flanagan (2007) posit that youths’ critical consciousness development is moderated by the availability of meaningful opportunities (“opportunity structures”) for them to engage in critical reflection and action. Regarding the potential of schools and educators to offer such meaningful opportunities, Freire (1973) asserted that critical consciousness is best engendered through a “problem-posing” pedagogical approach in which the educator introduces social issues as problems to be investigated jointly by teachers and students in which “both are simultaneously students and teachers” (p. 72). In so doing, students come to see their community and broader society as capable of transformation, and to see themselves as possessing the capacity to serve as agents of such transformation. Freire contrasted this problem-posing approach to education with traditional “banking” models of education in which teachers serve as authority figures responsible for depositing information into students, and in which students learn to adapt to oppressive conditions rather than challenge them.

Numerous critical pedagogues argue that—because banking approaches to education remain prevalent in primary and secondary schools across the United States—the curriculum, programming, and practices in such schools typically reify or reproduce oppressive racial and economic conditions (e.g., Apple, 1990; Giroux, 1981). Other scholars, however, have reported that school-based programs such as ethnic studies courses (Cammarota, 2007; Sleeter & Zavala, 2020), critical civic inquiry groups (Kirshner, 2015), and youth participatory action research projects (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008) can foster students’ critical consciousness of racial and economic injustice. Specifically, ethnic studies courses engage students in deeply investigating the ways in which racism and colonialism influence their communities and can deepen participants’ commitment to social action challenging these oppressive forces (Sleeter & Zavala, 2020). Critical civic inquiry can strengthen young people’s feelings of political agency by providing opportunities to critically reflect upon oppressive social forces within educational systems and to engage in critical action challenging oppression within their own school community (Kirshner, 2015). Finally, youth participatory action research (YPAR) has been found to strengthen all dimensions of critical consciousness by engaging youth in identifying a social problem, researching the problem, and then developing, executing, and evaluating a plan to address the social problem (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008). Other scholars have reported on school-based practices such as critical literacy (Lee, 2007; Mirra, 2018) and critical media literacy (Kelly, 2013; Morrell, 2004) that strengthen students’ critical reflection skills by offering tools and space for investigating the codes and messages about race and power included in literary, media, and cultural texts.

Earlier work from our research team reporting on data from this same longitudinal project has also sought to contribute to the extant scholarship on schools and youth critical consciousness development. In one set of analyses, we used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) with effects modeling to consider the critical consciousness development of youth attending particular high schools in our study to their peers in the broader sample (Seider et al., 2017; Seider & Graves, 2020). When these analyses indicated that students attending a particular school had demonstrated outsized growth on a particular dimension of critical consciousness, we utilized student interviews and ethnographic field notes collected from that particular school to describe schooling practices that seemed to contribute to youth critical consciousness development. From these studies emerged a number of promising schooling practices such as the opportunity for students to teach their peers and the use of real-world assignments that contributed to students’ feelings of political agency and commitment to critical action, respectively (Seider & Graves, 2020). Importantly, these earlier studies differed from the present study in their reliance on an analytic strategy that compared youth attending a single high school with the broader sample of participating adolescents as well as ethnographic field notes data from observations at these schools. In contrast, the present study compares the critical consciousness development of youth attending multiple high schools that can be grouped into two broad, opposing pedagogical models: “progressive” and “no-excuses.”

These two schooling models are described in greater detail in the “Method” section, but each represents approximately 10% of the 6,500 charter schools in the United States (McShane & Hatfield, 2015). Importantly, several key features of the progressive schooling model resonate with elements of the problem-posing approach for which Freire (1973) advocated, and several key features of the no-excuses model align with the banking model of education that Freire critiqued. Accordingly, the comparison in the present study of the critical consciousness development of youth attending these “opposing” schooling models presents an opportunity to consider the relationships Freire (1970) theorized between critical consciousness, problem-posing education, and a banking approach to education (Mehta & Fine, 2019).

Several earlier publications reporting on preliminary findings from this same longitudinal study did not take up this opportunity to consider Freire’s (1970) writings on critical consciousness and pedagogy, in large part, because they analyzed the available data through the lens of sociopolitical development rather than critical consciousness (e.g., Seider et al., 2016, 2018, 2020b). For example, we reported at the conclusion of adolescents’ first year of high school that youth attending progressive schools demonstrated significant growth in their awareness of systemic racism while youth attending no-excuses schools demonstrated significant growth in their confidence in navigating oppressive settings (Seider et al., 2016). Likewise, another study conducted after adolescents’ second year of high school reported that youth attending progressive schools demonstrated significantly steeper growth in their sociopolitical consciousness of racism than their peers attending no-excuses schools, while the no-excuses students demonstrated significantly higher sociopolitical consciousness of economic inequity (Seider et al., 2018). The term sociopolitical consciousness was intended to signal that the study considered only the analytic or critical reflection dimension of participating adolescents’ sociopolitical development. Importantly, the present study—which considers adolescents’ development across the critical reflection, political agency, and critical action dimensions of critical consciousness—reported that these differences in adolescents’ understanding of different systems of oppression did not persist over their ensuing years of high school.

Finally, analyses conducted at the conclusion of adolescents’ third year of high school found that youth attending progressive high schools demonstrated significant growth in their social analysis skills while youth attending no-excuses schools demonstrated a significantly higher commitment to activism. These findings align more closely with the quantitative results reported in the present study on adolescents’ critical consciousness development over all 4 years of high school. Importantly, however, the additional year of qualitative interview data included in the present study both altered and deepened our understanding of the schooling practices contributing to these differences in adolescents’ critical consciousness development. For example, a key theme that emerged in interviews with youth attending no-excuses schools at the end of their third year of high school was their participation in a small number of statewide protests for equitable education funding that seemed to have contributed to their developing commitment to critical action. However, interviews with these same young people a year later as they prepared to graduate from high school did not surface these (or other) protests as a key contributor to their burgeoning commitment to activism. Instead, as described in the “Results” below, participating adolescents cited their participation in several different types of school-based activities as substantive contributors to their developing commitment to critical action. Consequently, the final wave of qualitative data collected for the present study substantively influenced our analyses of the contributions of progressive and no-excuses schooling models to students’ critical consciousness development and also contributed directly to new insights articulated in the “Discussion” section about why these findings should not be regarded as evidence of the ability of the no-excuses schooling model to foster youth critical consciousness development or as a challenge to Freire’s (1970, 1973) earlier writings on critical consciousness and problem-posing educational practices. These important points are neither raised nor considered in publications reporting on analyses of earlier waves of data. Finally, one additional way the present study extends this prior work is by drawing on interview data to illustrate and exemplify adolescents’ growth in critical reflection and critical action across five waves of survey data—a synthesis of this study’s quantitative and qualitative data that was not included in previous studies. For all of these reasons, the present study makes a distinctive addition to earlier analyses of data from this longitudinal project.

Participants

The study’s participants were adolescents (n = 453) who entered the ninth grade in September of 2013 at six urban public charter high schools—publicly funded schools overseen by their respective state departments of education rather than by local school boards—located in five northeastern cities in the United States. All of these youth had been admitted to their respective schools via randomized registration lotteries. Within this sample, 196 adolescents identified as male (43%) and 257 as female (57%). A total of 220 (48%) identified as Black or African American; 93 (20%) identified as Latinx; and 140 (31%) identified as multiracial. Nearly 80% of participating youth qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, a proxy for low SES. These demographic characteristics are reported by school in Table 1. We were not able to collect information related to the language, immigration, or generational status of participating adolescents. However, because these adolescents were drawn from five different cities, there was substantial diversity even within the racial-ethnic groups cited above. For example, the youth identifying as Latinx from one city were predominantly first- and second-generation immigrants from South and Central American countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, and Colombia while the Latinx youth from another city came primarily from Puerto Rican and Dominican American families that had been residing in the United States for several generations. Pseudonyms are used for all participating schools and youth referenced in this article.

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Table 1.

Participating Schools (N = 6).

School	Pedagogy	Urban context	Students of color (%)	F/R lunch (%)	Mission, philosophy or core values
Community Academy	Progressive: Expeditionary Learning	Large northeastern city	99	75	Philosophy: Develop in students the knowledge, skills, and commitment to envision a better world and work toward achieving it.
Make the Road Academy	Progressive: Problem-Posing	Midsize industrial city	100	76	Mission: To offer students an education that strengthens our community by equipping them to address educational and social inequities.
Espiritu High School	Progressive: Coalition of Essential Schools	Midsize industrial city	91	78	Mission: Community involvement and improvement are central goals at Espiritu Academy . . . Students engage in deep learning and reflection about their own experiences and relationships to others in our community.
Leadership High School	No-excuses	Large northeastern city	100	81	Mission: To educate socially responsible students for a life of active and engaged citizenship.
Tubman High School	No-excuses	Midsize industrial city	100	77	Core Value: We work to improve our community and the world.
Freedom Preparatory Academy	No-excuses	Midsize industrial city	99	73	Mission: Freedom Prep graduates will possess the skills and drive to serve as the next generation of leaders of our community

Note. F/R = free or reduced price.

Participating Schools

As noted above, the six participating schools were similar in their geography (northeastern U.S. cities), student demographics (predominantly Black and Latinx youth from low-income households), admissions processes (randomized lottery), and school type (nonprofit public charters). Additionally, all six schools featured mission or vision statements that included explicit goals for fostering students’ civic development (see Table 1). However, three of these schools were guided by progressive schooling models, and the three others by a no-excuses model. Below, we describe key features of these two schooling models as well as the six participating schools (see Table 1 for more about each school).

Data Collection

Two types of data were collected for this research study. First, entering ninth-grade students at the six schools completed pencil-and-paper surveys (written in English) in September of 2013 (n = 453) that included previously validated measures corresponding with the three dimensions of critical consciousness. These youth then completed this same survey in May 2014 at the conclusion of their ninth-grade year (n = 445); in May 2015 at the conclusion of their tenth-grade year (n = 391); in May 2016 at the conclusion of their 11th-grade year (n = 368); and in May 2017 at the conclusion of their 12th-grade year (n = 348).

During the spring of 2014, we also conducted 30- to 60-minute qualitative interviews with 10 to 12 ninth-grade students from each of the participating schools (n = 70). Students were randomly selected by our research team from course rosters of ninth-grade advisory periods, and the average interview with these ninth graders lasted approximately 45 minutes. All interviews were conducted by a member our research team comprised of two faculty members, two postdoctoral fellows, and five doctoral students. Demographically, our research team ranged in age from 25 to 45 years old, included two men and seven women, and five African Americans and four White Americans. Each research team member completely approximately five to 10 interviews apiece. We then interviewed 53 of these adolescents again in the spring of their 10th-, 11th-, and 12th-grade school years for a total of four interviews per student (17 students were no longer attending their respective schools). The protocol for our student interviews was adapted from earlier studies on youth critical consciousness and designed to learn more about participants’ ability to engage in critical reflection and critical action. Sample questions from this protocol included prompts such as the following: “Tell me about something in your community or the world that you think is unjust or not right,” “Do you think society gives people of all race an equal chance to succeed?” and “What opportunities have you had to participate in changing something that was unfair or not right?”

Measures

This study’s survey tool included three measures of youths’ ability to engage in critical reflection, two measures of critical action, and two measures of political agency that were all adapted from previously validated scales. Exploratory factor analysis (promax rotation) revealed the items comprising each of these measures loaded appropriately on the underlying factors, and Cronbach’s coefficient alpha indicated acceptable-to-good internal consistency reliability for six of these measures and questionable reliability for a seventh measure (see Table 2 for reliabilities, factor loadings, sample items, etc.). The three measures of critical reflection were the following: awareness of interpersonal racism (Oyserman et al., 1995), awareness of systemic racism (Gurin et al., 2011), and awareness of systemic causes of poverty (NPR-Kaiser-Harvard, 2001). The two measures of critical action were the following: commitment to activism (Corning & Myer, 2002) and achievement as resistance (Oyserman et al., 1995). Finally the two measures of political agency were the following: youth sociopolitical control (Peterson et al., 2011) and youth social responsibility (Pancer et al., 2007). Youth responded to all of the items comprising these measures along a 5-point Likert-type scale in which a “1” represented no way! or not like me at all, and a “5” represented definitely! or very much like me. We analyzed participating youths’ shifts on each of these individual measures rather than merging them together into a single composite of youth critical consciousness.

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Table 2.

Study Measures.

Category	Measure	Adapted from	No. of items	α	Range of factor loadings	Sample item
Critical reflection
	Awareness of interpersonal racism	Oyserman et al. (1995)	3	.79	0.53–0.61	“Some people will treat me differently because I am (student’s racial group).”
	Awareness of systemic racism	Gurin et al. (2011)	4	.67	0.43–0.54	“Racism in the educational system limits the success of Blacks, Latinos, and other racial minorities.”
	Awareness of systemic causes of poverty	NPR-Kaiser-Harvard (2001)	5	.75	0.42–0.51	“A shortage of jobs is a major cause of poverty.”
Critical action
	Commitment to activism	Corning and Myer (2002)	9	.80	0.27–0.38	“How likely is it now or in the future that you will take part in a protest, march or demonstration?”
	Achievement as resistance	Oyserman et al. (1995)	4	.78	0.48–0.52	“If I am successful, it will help the (student’s racial group) community.”
Political agency
	Sociopolitical control	Peterson et al. (2011)	6	.79	0.39–0.44	“There are plenty of ways for youth like me to have a say in what our community or school does.”
	Youth social responsibility	Pancer et al. (2007)	8	.82	0.24–0.41	“Young people have an important role to play in making the world a better place.”

Data Analysis

This project utilized a sequential explanatory analytic strategy in which we first analyzed quantitative survey data to test relationships, and then qualitative interview data to explain and interpret initial results (Creswell & Clark, 2011). We selected this analytic strategy out of a belief that quantitative methods are well suited to estimating the magnitude of change over time but that qualitative methods are well suited to identifying the processes guiding such development (Yoshikawa et al., 2008). For this reason, as described below, we first estimated participating adolescents’ change over time in their critical consciousness using quantitative survey data and then sought to understand the factors and processes guiding this development using qualitative interview data. In so doing, our quantitative findings motivated the themes we explored in our qualitative interview data; however, we also remained open to qualitative results that contradicted our quantitative findings. Mistry and colleagues (2016) assert that such a mixed-methods approach—and the collection of multiple forms of data—is particularly useful for research investigating youths’ understandings of social forces such as economic inequality due to the “complex and sometimes conflicting nature” of young people’s ideas about these social forces (p. 213).

Developing Critical Consciousness

The descriptive statistics for youths’ scores on three key critical consciousness measures included in the student surveys are presented in Table 3 (and the descriptive statistics for all seven measures are available in Online Appendix A). These summary statistics reveal that youth attending both progressive and no-excuses schools demonstrated growth, on average, on all seven of the measures from the beginning to the end of high school. ¹ As is evident in Table 4, however, several important differences also emerged between the youth attending progressive and no-excuses schools that we discuss in greater detail below.

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Table 3.

Summary Statistics (Mean, Standard Deviation) for Three Key Critical Consciousness Measures (n = 453 Students).

	N	Awareness of systemic causes of poverty					Awareness of systemic racism					Commitment to activism
Schools		T1	T2	T3	T4	T5	T1	T2	T3	T4	T5	T1	T2	T3	T4	T5
Freedom Prep	131/78	3.38(0.66)	3.35(0.77)	3.43(0.81)	3.43(0.80)	3.51(0.86)	3.41(0.66)	3.72(0.77)	3.62(0.70)	3.71(0.77)	4.00(0.65)	2.98(0.61)	2.95(0.70)	3.05(0.70)	3.10(0.66)	3.30(0.68)
Espiritu HS	44/40	3.20(0.54)	3.30(0.57)	3.64(0.69)	3.67(0.67)	3.90(0.72)	2.94(0.56)	3.17(0.66)	3.44(0.78)	3.84(0.70)	3.79(0.74)	3.04(0.50)	3.02(0.43)	2.83(0.59)	3.11(0.65)	3.38(0.77)
Community Acad	41/28	2.94(0.71)	3.13(0.75)	3.36(0.83)	3.58(0.88)	3.45(0.95)	3.45(0.70)	3.42(0.79)	3.73(0.67)	3.92(1.04)	3.81(0.84)	2.61(0.81)	2.74(0.70)	3.20(0.63)	3.13(0.70)	3.17(0.75)
Leadership HS	82/75	3.36(0.62)	3.25(0.72)	3.51(0.70)	3.59(0.73)	3.92(0.66)	3.67(0.66)	3.68(0.68)	3.72(0.68)	3.80(0.67)	3.99(0.70)	3.10(0.75)	3.00(0.76)	3.30(0.67)	3.33(0.77)	3.49(0.71)
Tubman HS	95/74	3.58(0.66)	3.61(0.72)	3.76(0.70)	3.89(0.68)	3.94(0.67)	3.74(0.76)	3.66(0.82)	3.69(0.70)	3.97(0.69)	4.17(0.65)	3.12(0.63)	3.11(0.62)	3.27(0.69)	3.30(0.63)	3.46(0.69)
Make the Road Acad.	60/59	3.27(0.50)	3.40(0.72)	3.40(0.67)	3.50(0.68)	3.74(0.68)	3.46(0.62)	3.85(0.76)	3.88(0.79)	4.01(0.80)	4.23(0.64)	3.17(0.69)	3.23(0.69)	3.07(0.89)	3.01(0.75)	3.08(0.72)
Progressive (Cumulative)	150/126	3.16(0.59)	3.29(0.69)	3.47(0.72)	3.57(0.73)	3.73(0.77)	3.28(0.66)	3.50(0.79)	3.69(0.77)	3.94(0.83)	4.00(0.74)	2.97(0.71)	3.02(0.65)	3.02(0.74)	3.07(0.70)	3.19(0.75)
No-Excuses (Cumulative)	308/227	3.44(0.65)	3.41(0.75)	3.55(0.75)	3.63(0.76)	3.79(0.76)	3.58(0.71)	3.69(0.76)	3.67(0.69)	3.82(0.71)	4.05(0.67)	3.05(0.66)	3.02(0.70)	3.20(0.69)	3.24(0.69)	3.41(0.69)
All Schools (Cumulative)	453/351	3.35(0.65)	3.37(0.73)	3.52(0.74)	3.61(0.75)	3.77(0.76)	3.48(0.71)	3.63(0.78)	3.68(0.72)	3.86(0.76)	4.03(0.70)	3.03(0.68)	3.02(0.68)	3.14(0.71)	3.18(0.70)	3.33(0.72)

Note. HS = high school.

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Table 4.

HLM for Critical Consciousness Measures (n = 453).

	Awareness of interpersonal racism					Awareness of systemic racism					Awareness of systemic causes of poverty
Variables	b	SE	t	p	% Red in Var	b	SE	t	p	% Red in Var	b	SE	t	p	% Red in Var
Intercept	3.82	0.14	28.27	<.0001		4.16	0.11	39.36	<.0001		3.56	0.11	33.44	<.0001
Year	0.18	0.02	8.11	<.0001		0.17	0.02	8.91	<.0001		0.14	0.02	7.96	<.0001
Gender	−0.19	0.06	−3.10	.00		−0.08	0.05	−1.66	0.09		−0.09	0.05	−1.97	0.05
Latinx	−0.19	0.08	−2.37	.02		0.03	0.06	0.51	0.61		−0.10	0.06	−1.65	0.09
Multiracial	−0.11	0.08	−1.38	.17		0.03	0.06	0.46	0.65		−0.01	0.06	−0.02	0.98
City1	0.51	0.10	5.42	<.0001		0.05	0.07	0.7	0.48		0.24	0.07	3.20	0.001
City2	0.08	0.09	0.97	.33		−0.09	0.07	−1.37	0.17		−0.02	0.07	−0.27	0.79
City3	−0.26	0.16	−1.65	.10		−0.38	0.12	−3.08	0.002		0.32	0.12	2.64	0.008
City4	0.14	0.16	0.91	.36		−0.16	0.12	−1.26	0.21		0.03	0.12	0.26	0.79
No-Excuses	0.26	0.12	2.18	.36	1.8	−0.16	0.09	−1.64	0.10	1.7	0.14	0.09	1.49	0.14	2.1%
Year × No-Excuses	−0.01	0.03	−0.54	.59	<1.0	−0.06	0.02	−2.72	0.007	3.4	−0.05	0.02	−2.53	0.01	5.7%
	Commitment to Activism					Achievement as Resistance					Sociopolitical Control
	B	SE	t	p	% Red in Var	b	SE	T	p	% Red in Var	b	SE	t	p	% Red in Var
Intercept	3.32	0.11	31.59	<.0001		4.10	0.11	38.48	<.0001		3.81	0.08	43.11	<.0001
Year	0.05	0.02	2.77	.006		0.02	0.01	1.70	.09		0.04	0.01	5.44	<.0001
Gender	−0.19	0.05	−4.16	<.0001		−0.11	0.05	−2.09	.04		−0.13	0.04	−3.16	.001
Latino	−0.03	0.06	−0.54	.58		0.02	0.07	0.30	.76		0.01	0.05	0.18	.86
Multiracial	0.01	0.06	0.20	.84		−0.12	0.07	−1.83	.07		−0.03	0.05	−0.51	.60
City1	0.01	0.07	0.17	.87		−0.04	0.08	−0.47	.64		0.05	0.06	0.75	.45
	Commitment to Activism					Achievement as Resistance					Sociopolitical Control
	B	SE	t	p	% Red in Var	b	SE	T	p	% Red in Var	b	SE	t	p	% Red in Var
City2	−0.12	0.07	−1.76	.08		−0.12	0.07	−1.61	.11		−0.16	0.05	−2.66	.008
City3	−0.04	0.12	−0.36	.71		−0.16	0.13	−1.23	.22		0.17	0.11	1.58	.11
City4	−0.28	0.12	−2.30	.02		0.12	0.13	0.90	.37		0.14	0.11	1.26	.21
No-excuses	0.12	0.09	1.38	.17	1.9	0.04	0.09	0.41	.68	0	0.06	0.07	0.91	.36	0
Year × No-Excuses	0.04	0.02	1.87	.06	2.8	—	—	—	—		—	—	—	—	—
	Youth social responsibility
	b		SE		t			p			% Red in Var
Intercept	4.35		0.07		54.62			<.0001
Pwise1 (T1–T2)	0.11		0.03		3.76			.0002
Pwise2 (T2–T3)	−0.10		0.03		−3.04			.002
Pwise3 (T3–T5)	0.13		0.02		7.05			<.0001
Gender	−0.18		0.04		−4.78			<.0001
Latino	0.06		0.05		1.34			.18
Multiracial	−0.08		0.05		−1.58			.11
City1	0.07		0.05		1.30			.19
City2	−0.16		0.05		−2.93			.003
City3	0.14		0.09		1.48			.14
City4	−0.07		0.09		−0.75			.45
No-excuses	0.09		0.06		1.44			.15			<1
Year × No-Excuses	—		—		—			—

Note. For each of these measures, Year × No-Excuses was only included for the outcomes that had significant variability in slopes (i.e., where slopes were treated as random effects). HLM = hierarchical linear modeling.

Educating for Critical Consciousness

Given the quantitative findings reported above, we turned to our qualitative interviews to investigate participating adolescents’ understandings of the role that their respective schools played in their critical consciousness development. Specifically, we sought adolescents’ descriptions and understandings of the programming and practices by which (a) the progressive schools contributed to students’ engagement in critical reflection about racism and poverty; (b) no-excuses schools contributed to their students’ commitment to critical action; and (c) additional data regarding critical reflection at the no-excuses schools and critical action at the progressive schools.

Growth in Different Dimensions of Critical Consciousness

Our HLM analyses revealed that youth attending the progressive schools in the present study demonstrated significantly greater rates of growth on two measures of critical reflection than their peers attending the no-excuses schools. We also illustrated this growth in critical reflection of adolescents attending progressive high schools through the example of Marlena, a progressive high school student who shifted over 4 years of high school from acknowledging differences in the economic status of privileged and marginalized racial groups in the United States to articulating precisely how public education systems and residential segregation practices contributed to those inequities. The combination of this survey and interview data highlighted the ways in which adolescents attending this study’s progressive high schools were developing deeper understandings of systemic racism and systemic causes of poverty over 4 years of high school. These findings also offer an important update on analyses conducted midway through adolescents’ high school years that found students attending progressive and no-excuses high schools demonstrated significant growth in their critical reflection on different types of oppression (Seider et al., 2018)—a finding that did not persist over students’ ensuing years of high school.

HLM analyses also revealed that youth attending the no-excuses schools in the present study demonstrated a greater rate of growth approaching statistical significance in their commitment to critical action than their peers at the progressive schools. Likewise, we illustrated this growth in no-excuses students’ commitment to critical action through the example of one no-excuses school student, Jasper, who shifted from reporting little interest in social action as a ninth grader to actively engaging in sociopolitical activism through school-based opportunities as a sophomore and then via his friends on their own initiative as an 11th and 12th grader. The combination of these data is well served to illustrate the ways in which adolescents attending no-excuses high schools in the present study demonstrated meaningful growth in their commitment to critical action over their 4 years of high school. These findings also offer an important update on analyses conducted after adolescents’ first year of high school that suggested youth attending no-excuses schools were developing skills related to navigating rather than challenging oppression (Seider et al., 2016)—a finding that did not persist over participants’ ensuing years of high school.

To consider these key findings through the lens of Freire’s (1970, 1973) foundational work on education and critical consciousness, recall that Freire (1970) argued critical consciousness is best engendered through a problem-posing education in which teachers and students work together to investigate and challenge social problems shaping their communities. This connection that Freire posited between critical consciousness and problem-posing education has guided much of the work by contemporary scholars on fostering youth critical consciousness both inside and outside of traditional school spaces (e.g., Cammarota, 2007; Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008; Kirshner, 2015).

Given the similar emphases in problem-posing and progressive schooling approaches on egalitarian teacher-student relationships and social justice curriculum, one might describe this study’s first key finding—that young people attending progressive schools demonstrated significantly higher rates of change in their ability to analyze racial and economic injustice—as resonant with the extant scholarship on critical consciousness and pedagogy. More specifically, one might point to the progressive schools’ incorporation of programming such as the Community Inquiry Projects at Espiritu High School as an example of problem-posing education that effectively engaged students in critical reflection upon oppressive social forces shaping their communities. As noted in our “Results” section, there were opportunities in the no-excuses schools for students to engage in critical reflection about oppressive social forces (e.g., courses on African American Literature, The Black Experience, and Civics). However, these opportunities at the no-excuses schools seemed both smaller in scope and less embedded in the school’s core programming than the opportunities for critical reflection at the progressive schools. It is notable, for example, that the opportunities for critical reflection cited by adolescents at the three no-excuses schools all occurred in stand-alone courses at the end of students’ high school experiences. In contrast, the examples offered by students from the progressive schools (e.g., Social Engagement, Community Inquiry Projects) occurred at the beginning of students’ high school experiences and, consequently, could inform and shape the direction of students’ learning experiences over their subsequent years of high school.

Critical Consciousness and No-Excuses Schools

This study’s second key finding—that youth attending no-excuses schools demonstrated higher rates of change in critical action than their progressive school peers—seems initially to challenge the extant scholarship on critical consciousness and pedagogy. As noted in the introduction, Freire (1970) asserted in his foundational writings on critical consciousness that the banking approach to education found in most primary and secondary schools is antithetical to the development of students’ critical consciousness. According to Freire, the banking approach positions teachers as authority figures responsible for depositing information into students, and, in so doing, teaches students to adapt to oppressive conditions rather than challenge them. Given that the no-excuses schooling model embraces both direct instruction and the teacher-as-authority-figure, one might initially interpret the meaningful growth in critical action demonstrated by the youth attending this study’s no-excuses schools as a challenge to Freire’s foundational work on pedagogy and critical consciousness. However, interviews with youth attending the no-excuses schools revealed that several of these schools had adopted a small set of programming that incorporated elements of problem-posing education. For example, as noted above, students attending two of the no-excuses schools cited semester-long social action projects as having contributed to their development of a commitment to critical action—a key dimension of critical consciousness. Perhaps most notable in youths’ descriptions of these semester-long projects at their respective no-excuses high schools was that these projects offered youth more opportunities than the rest of the school’s curriculum for choice and autonomy, to co-construct their learning experience, and to engage in authentic sociopolitical activism in their communities. Put another way, one might characterize these learning opportunities as far closer to a problem-posing approach to education than was typically found at these schools in particular and in no-excuses schools more broadly. Consequently, the fact that students in both of these no-excuses schools pointed to these learning experiences to explain their respective schools’ contributions to their critical consciousness suggests that this study’s results should not be taken as support for the ability of the no-excuses model to foster youth critical consciousness. In other words, the results of the present study cannot refute claims that the no-excuses model is incompatible with critical consciousness development (e.g., Levinson, 2012; Sondel, 2016) because the programming that youth in these no-excuses schools characterized as “opportunity structures” for their critical consciousness development seemed to represent problem-posing practices embedded within a broader no-excuses schooling context (Watts & Flanagan, 2007).

If the results of the present study do not confirm the ability of the no-excuses model to foster youth critical consciousness development, might they instead be taken as evidence that individual no-excuses schools can take up specific practices that run counter to the broader approach of the schooling model and, in so doing, exert positive effects on key dimensions of youth critical consciousness? Put another way, do these findings raise the possibility that schools featuring a banking approach to education can embed problem-posing practices into their curriculum or programming that contribute meaningfully to their students’ growth in particular dimensions of critical consciousness?

Two caveats related to such conclusions are that the meaningful growth in critical action demonstrated by adolescents attending no-excuses schools in the present study only approached statistical significance and was not accompanied by similar growth in these young people’s feelings of political agency. Given prior research demonstrating positive associations between young people’s commitment to critical action and feelings of political agency (e.g., Diemer & Rapa, 2016; Hope & Jagers, 2014; Nicholas et al., 2019), one might have expected that young people in the present study demonstrating meaningful growth in their commitment to critical action would also demonstrate similar growth in their feelings that they can influence political systems (Peterson et al., 2011) and should influence political systems (Pancer et al., 2007). However, the growth in political agency of adolescents attending no-excuses schools in the present study did not differ significantly from that of their peers attending progressive schools. And, in fact, summary statistics revealed that adolescents attending no-excuses schools actually concluded high school with, on average, lower scores on both measures of political agency than their peers attending progressive schools.

Perhaps one reason that no-excuses students in the present study did not demonstrate meaningful rates of change in their feelings of political agency was because their opportunities to engage in critical action occurred within no-excuses schooling contexts that did not more broadly encourage student autonomy, voice, and choice. Freire (1970) describes such schooling contexts as antithetical to critical consciousness development in that students from oppressed groups are taught to adapt to their conditions rather than coming to see themselves as possessing the capacity to serve as agents of societal transformation. In other words, several of the no-excuses schools included in the present study may have included a few discrete opportunities for engaging in critical action that strengthened participating adolescents’ developing commitment to critical action, and which participating adolescents themselves cited as deepening their commitment to engaging in critical action. However, the critical consciousness development of these young people attending no-excuses schools was not simultaneously supported by a schooling context that offered widespread opportunities for critical reflection or which encouraged their feelings of political agency. Accordingly, there is reason to be skeptical whether the “piecemeal” incorporation of problem-posing educational practices at several of the no-excuses schools in the present study can support adolescents’ development of the full constellation of skills and commitments that Freire (1970) characterized as essential for critical consciousness and personal and societal liberation.

Limitations

There were a number of limitations to the present study such as the lack of random assignment to the two school types. Although youth were admitted to all six schools via randomized registration lotteries, it is possible that youth were differentially likely to enter lotteries for enrollment in these different schooling models. A second limitation was that the relatively small number of schools in our study prevented us from modeling our quantitative data with a three-level model that accounted for youth being nested within schools. A third limitation was the relatively low internal consistency reliability of the study’s awareness of systemic racism measure. As noted in the “Method” section, a fourth limitation is that students at no-excuses schools began their first year of high school (Time 1) with significantly higher scores on all seven critical consciousness measures than their peers attending the progressive schools. We noted that this difference could be due to the majority of no-excuses students attending “feeder” middle schools within the same charter networks as their respective high schools and cited these higher baseline scores as an important reason to focus on students’ rate of change on these measures. That said, the significantly lower baseline scores of students attending the progressive schools meant that these students had a greater opportunity to demonstrate steeper growth on the study measures over their 4 years of high school. Additional research might address this limitation by comparing youth at the participating schools with peers who registered for the randomized lotteries at these schools but were not admitted. Finally, our decision to utilize a sequential exploratory analytic strategy that began with the quantitative analyses may have narrowed the lens with which we considered our student interview data. Despite explicitly seeking out contradictory and discrepant data, this approach may have resulted in us overlooking patterns and themes that might otherwise have emerged from these student interviews.

Implications

Scholars have long argued that schools have an important role to play in strengthening marginalized youths’ capacity to analyze and challenge economic and racial inequity in the United States (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Lee, 1992; Perry, 2003). Results from the present study underscore the impact upon young people’s critical consciousness development of schooling practices that value and draw upon the lived experiences students bring with them into the classroom, and which offer students opportunities to learn and apply civic skills. Accordingly, these results offer important support to state departments of education that have sought in recent years to make ethnic studies coursework (e.g., California) and action civics programming (e.g., Massachusetts) graduation requirements for all high school students (Blume & Agrawal, 2019; Jennings, 2018). At the same time, the results of the present study also stand as a reminder of Freire’s (1970) assertions that powerful critical consciousness development comes about, not in a single course or from an isolated schooling practice, but rather in educational contexts that offer rich opportunities for both critical reflection and critical action. Such rich contexts have the potential to support youth from marginalized racial and economic groups in developing the “psychological armor” necessary to navigate and challenge the oppressive social forces shaping our lives and communities (Phan, 2010).