Critical consciousness, conscientization,
or conscientização in Portuguese, is a popular
education and social concept developed by
Brazilian pedagogue and educational theorist
Paulo Freire, grounded in post-Marxist critical
theory.
Critical consciousness focuses on achieving
an in-depth understanding of the world, allowing
for the perception and exposure of social
and political contradictions.
Critical consciousness also includes taking
action against the oppressive elements in
one's life that are illuminated by that understanding.
== Coinage ==
The English term "conscientization" is a translation
of the Portuguese term conscientização,
which is also translated as "consciousness
raising" and "critical consciousness".
The term was popularized by Brazilian educator,
activist, and theorist Paulo Freire in his
1970 work Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Freire was teaching the poor and illiterate
members of Brazilian society to read at a
time when literacy was a requirement for suffrage
and dictators ruled many South American countries.
The term originally derives from Frantz Fanon's
coinage of a French term, conscienciser, in
his 1952 book, Black Skins, White Masks.
== Overview ==
Paulo Freire defines critical consciousness
as the ability to "intervene in reality in
order to change it."
Critical consciousness proceeds through the
identification of "generative themes", which
Freire identifies as "iconic representations
that have a powerful emotional impact in the
daily lives of learners."
In this way, individual consciousness helps
end the "culture of silence" in which the
socially dispossessed internalize the negative
images of themselves created and propagated
by the oppressor in situations of extreme
poverty.
Liberating learners from this mimicry of the
powerful, and the fratricidal violence that
results therefrom is a major goal of critical
consciousness.
Critical consciousness is a fundamental aspect
of Freire's concept of popular education.
Arlene Goldbard, an author on the subject
of community cultural development finds the
concept of conscientization to be a foundation
of community cultural development.
From the glossary of Goldbard's 2006 book
New Creative Community.: "Conscientization
is an ongoing process by which a learner moves
toward critical consciousness.
This process is the heart of liberatory education.
It differs from "consciousness raising" in
that the latter may involve transmission of
preselected knowledge.
Conscientization means engaging in praxis,
in which one both reflects and takes action
on their social reality to break through prevailing
mythologies and reach new levels of awareness—in
particular, awareness of oppression, being
an "object" of others’ will rather than
a self-determining "subject."
The process of conscientization involves identifying
contradictions in experience through dialogue
and becoming part of the process of changing
the world."
== 
History of application ==
The ancient Greeks first identified the essence
of critical consciousness when philosophers
encouraged their students to develop an "impulse
and willingness to stand back from humanity
and nature... [and] to make them objects of
thought and criticism, and to search for their
meaning and significance.
In his books Pedagogy of the Oppressed and
Education for Critical Consciousness, Freire
explains critical consciousness as a sociopolitical
educative tool that engages learners in questioning
the nature of their historical and social
situation, which Freire addressed as "reading
the world".
The goal of critical consciousness, according
to Freire, should be acting as subjects in
the creation of democratic society.
In education, Freire implies intergenerational
equity between students and teachers in which
both learn, both question, both reflect and
both participate in meaning-making.
Using this idea, and describing current instructional
methods as homogenization and lockstep standardization,
alternative approaches are proposed, such
as the Sudbury model of democratic education
schools, an alternative approach in which
children, by enjoying personal freedom thus
encouraged to exercise personal responsibility
for their actions, learn at their own pace
rather than following a previously imposed
chronologically-based curriculum.
In a similar form students learn all the subjects,
techniques and skills in these schools.
The staff are minor actors, the "teacher"
is an adviser and helps just when asked.
Sudbury model of democratic education schools
maintain that values, social justice, critical
consciousness, intergenerational equity, and
political consciousness included, must be
learned through experience, as Aristotle said:
"For the things we have to learn before we
can do them, we learn by doing them."Picking
up on Freire's definition of critical consciousness,
Joe L. Kincheloe has expanded the definition
of the concept in his work on postformalism.
In Kincheloe's formulation postformalism connects
cognition to critical theoretical questions
of power and social justice.
In this context Kincheloe constructs a critical
theory of cognition that explores questions
of meaning, emancipation vis-a-vis ideological
inscription, and a particular focus on the
socio-political construction of the self.
With these concerns in mind Kincheloe's postformal
critical consciousness engages questions of
purpose, issues of human dignity, freedom,
authority, reconceptualized notions of reason,
intellectual quality, and social responsibility.
Postformal critical consciousness stimulates
a conversation between critical pedagogy and
a wide range of social, cultural, political
economic, psychological, and philosophical
concerns.
Kincheloe employs this "multilogical conversation"
to shape new modes of self-awareness, more
effective forms of social, political, and
pedagogical action, and an elastic model of
an evolving critical consciousness (Kincheloe
and Steinberg, 1993; Kincheloe, 1999; Thomas
and Kincheloe, 2006).
Freire's development of critical consciousness
has been expanded upon in several academic
disciplines and common applications.
Public health community collaborations focused
on HIV prevention for women, the role of critical
consciousness in adult education, and the
effect of peer pressure on cigarette smokers
Freire's notion of critical consciousness
is, in part, a type of political consciousness.
== See also ==
Adult education
Adult literacy
Class consciousness
Critical pedagogy
Identity politics
Liberation psychology
Popular education
Praxis
Praxis intervention
Teaching for social justice
