Taking the Teachers to School! Critical Consciousness Emerging: A Qualitative Exploration of Mexican American Youth’s Social Justice Orientation Development

Empirical research demonstrates that Chicanx students thrive in an educational setting where Western histories are de-centered, and the core objectives of the curricula are the student’s own self-exploration, the discovery of their subjectivity, social change, and learning (Cabrera et al. in Urban Rev 45:7–22, 2013). This critical pedagogical method, with a participatory style of education focused on equity, empowerment and hope, is a means to increase not only youth positive sense of self and capacity to overcome discrimination, but also as a means to achieve critical consciousness. The purpose of this research is to examine how youth sociopolitical lens/worldview changed over time during and since taking a Mexican American Studies course at a university. The main objective of this study is to understand how critical consciousness surfaces among Mexican American high school students in a university social justice course. This research is especially valuable today as communities of color continue to be systematically and disproportionately burdened by racist policies in U.S. education and the justice system. This research will add to the scholarly body of literature on the relationship between critical education and critical consciousness development among Mexican American youth.