Critical Pedagogy, Testimonio and Intersectionality: A Dialogical & Cross-Generational Examination of Latinx Critical Consciousness across the Lifespan

Abstract

Sociopolitical development (SPD), which is defined as the process by which individuals acquire and development the knowledge and skills necessary to analyze and interpret oppressive systems— including the emotional aptitude and agency to resist these oppressive systems, is routinely neglected in scholarship and policy on youth development. There has been an exponential increase in attention to civic engagement and participation of young people in recent years, however, much of the literature focusses on the maintenance of social and political institutions and does not center on social justice. There is a need for more research with a social justice lens to examine how sociopolitical behaviors are developed. This research has the potential to offer new insights and develop new measures to inform future research on sociopolitical development. Guided by an intersectional, social justice centered approach, the three studies in this dissertation examined the ways in which sociopolitical development, and specifically, critical consciousness (Freire, 2000) is surfaced in people of color. In order to interrogate the nuanced differences in CC development, my study approach examined this human development across lifespan and included multiple generations – from youth, to college-aged adolescents, and to elders in my three studies. I examined this continuous developmental process for each group, throughout life, and based on their contextual interactions with social structures and the world around them. The first study examined how an educational process based on critical pedagogy and critical race theory informed SPD, and specifically, the critical consciousness and identity of Mexican American high school students in a college classroom. The relationship between critical pedagogical practices and critical consciousness development were examined. Findings indicate that social justice centered, critical pedagogical practice predicts critical consciousness in Mexican American youth. The second study investigated the ways in which multiple identities simultaneously and mutually effect college students’ critical consciousness developmental process, and therefore their SPD. With careful inspection of the link between critical reflection and action, this study probed factors of race/ethnicity, first generation student status, class, gender, definitions of civic engagement, and how they may link together. Findings signal that profiles of social analysis predict civic behaviors and that the ways in which non-hetero-normative young people of color exhibit their SPD and define civic engagement is more robust, and pushes beyond current categorical measures of SPD, as well as definitions of what traditionally counts as civic engagement. The third study, through methodology of testimonio, examined how critical consciousness developed among a group of Latinx and African American women who are already social justice leaders, as well as examined how social justice worldview and social identities may be associated. Through their personal and collective location of community, and vindication in their self-validation, each of the women’s critical consciousness, and thus, perceived agency in positive change-making praxis, was cultivated through continued acts of radical love and unwavering sites of critical hope. Overall, findings provide evidence that critical consciousness is developed in a multitude of fluctuating ways over one’s human developmental stages. It is influenced by social justice centered critical pedagogy, and that one’s critical consciousness development, and therefore sociopolitical development, is surfaced and defined in ways that develop through unique and collective intersectional experiences. The implications of these findings suggest that the study of human development, specifically one’s sociopolitical development, must be guided by an intersectional methodological approach to capture the nuanced reflexive and dialectical relationships between the developing person and ecological and social systems.