Critical Consciousness and Educational Leadership

Abstract

There is a need for schools to implement practices to disrupt the inequities that exist for marginalized students in public education. As the theory of critical consciousness details, inequality is sustained when the people most affected by it are unable to decode their social conditions (El-Amin et al., 2017). An equitable democracy depends on critically conscious citizens (Seider & Graves, 2020). When educators and students can identify oppressive systems, they are better prepared to take action to disrupt those systems. This study analyzes how adult learning opportunities might position educators as agents of social justice-oriented educational practice. For the sake of this research, adult learning is defined as encompassing the learning experiences of educators, including district professional development as well as outside learning experiences in higher education institutions or the community. There is limited research regarding how the construct of race impacts adult learning experiences for critical consciousness. Therefore, this research studies the impacts of the construct of race during the process of adult learning. This study investigates how educators narrate their experiences with race during adult learning through the lens of critical consciousness.