Critical Consciousness: Strategies to Humanize Pedagogy in Virtual Elementary Classrooms Free

Power sharing in the classroom—which requires opportunities for students to have authority, autonomy, and agency—is a hallmark of critical consciousness (Morrison et al., 2008). By sharing power with students, teachers model democratic systems, develop student agency, and prepare students for positions of authority. Sharing power also subverts traditional top-down approaches to schooling. Similar to strategies observed in traditional, face-to-face classrooms, teachers supported power sharing in the virtual Freedom School classrooms by using teachers’ first names and making classroom decisions (Morrison et al., 2008). Yet there were unique features of these virtual, synchronous classes that contributed to the power sharing. Teachers with richer evidence of CC used the gallery view on ZOOM, which displays all participants equally, as opposed to the speaker view, which displays the speaker, usually the teacher. Some teachers encouraged students to choose class activities (e.g., working in breakout rooms versus the whole class) or responding with emojis versus verbal/written text. Teachers also used student voting to make classroom decisions. The chat feature lets teachers easily manage the voting process since they quickly survey names/responses in the chat to see who has not voted. Although we found incidents of power sharing, we did not see teachers explicitly connecting these actions to participating in sociopolitical systems, which would have better prepared students to critique these systems.

Another strategy to develop CC involved having students generate questions to critique society. This deconstructive strategy occurred most often as students prepared to conduct oral interviews with family members on culturally relevant topics such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) or Covid-19. Teachers prepared students to develop their questions by conducting mini lessons on topics like gathering background knowledge, differentiating between open/closed questions, and asking follow-up questions. However, in our sample, most students’ questions were associated with lower levels of cognitive complexity (i.e., Bloom’s knowledge and comprehension questions). For example, most student-generated questions asked how someone felt about an issue (e.g., how do you feel about covid/BLM, etc.). Some were more evaluative of issues (e.g.., do you agree with BLM, the government, etc.). To better analyze and critique society, teachers could use questioning framework/taxonomies (i.e., Paul’s Socratic Questioning Taxonomy, 2007) to help students generate higher-order questions (Nappi, 2017). The strategies used to support students in generating questions to critique society could be enacted similarly whether in a traditional, face-to-face or online classroom.

In the Freedom School classrooms, students created objects that critiqued society. This frequently occurred after read-alouds, as a summarizing activity to connect texts to students’ lived experiences and larger communities. Every classroom used the same read-aloud texts, but teachers differed in how they concluded the texts, which impacted the fostering of CC. For example, two teachers read the same book Moses: How Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom. After the read-aloud, one teacher asked students for their opinions on the book, resulting in limited CC. However, the other tied Tubman’s journey to the Israelites’ search for a Promised Land and then had students draw pictures of their own Promised Land, free from some social injustice. Students drew pictures of worlds without smoking/racism and discussed the necessity of rules to keep people safe. These two teachers also read The Doctor with An Eye For Eyes: The Story of Dr. Patricia Bath. Both teachers discussed the inherent sexism in the story. At the end of the book, one had students simply reflect on their opinions. The other prompted students to think about how schools/society encourage/discourage people from selecting careers based on their gender and then tasked students to draw pictures of people of one gender doing jobs associated with another gender, thus fostering more CC. Some virtual teachers even failed to provide opportunities for students to share their completed work, resulting in fewer CC.

Along with individual class activities, all students participated in the Freedom School’s culminating activity, making a Vote-Because poster. Students chose a social justice issue (e.g., protecting animals, creating affordable housing, eliminating food deserts, establishing equal rights, banning smoking/bullying/pollution to promote sustainable farming) to make a poster encouraging adults to take action/vote. Police brutality and the carceral system were frequently mentioned, with students tying their posters’ rationales to their personal lives (e.g.., an uncle’s incarceration) and society (e.g., the murder of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd). Teachers helped students strategize where they would display their posters in their homes or communities, thus encouraging social justice action.

Over half of all examples of CC in these virtual, synchronous classes occurred in tandem with discussing texts with critical content. We defined critical content as content that covered social justice issues, inequities, and oppression, or showed people taking social justice action. Although this was mainly associated with read-aloud texts, when teachers used critical texts for skill development, it sometimes led to tangential discussions that fostered CC. For example, one teacher streamed “Sesame Street explains BLM” to model gathering background information for an interview, which led to students asking more about protests/racism. Another activity that generated CC involved virtual museum tours of critical content (i.e., Voting Rights Art Museum, Civil Rights Museum, Jefferson School Heritage Center).

Still, most CC occurred as teachers read-aloud texts with critical content. Texts high with critical content included John Lewis in the Lead: A Story of the Civil Rights Movement, Lillian’s Right to Vote: A Celebration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton: Poet. These books examined a variety of historical inequities, but teachers fostered CC by tying these inequities to their students’ lives to critique society or take social justice action. Texts with the fewest amount of critical content were associated with low rates of CC. Additionally, we observed substantially more demonstrations of CC in lessons using texts with critical content versus general class discussion.

For instance, when reading The Good Garden: How One Family Went from Hunger to Having Enough, the class conversation started with predictable gardening topics that children related to (e.g., backyard composting, the stickiness of slugs). The teacher acknowledged the importance of farming but then discussed inequitable food distribution. This caused one girl to remember her mother talking about the Yemeni food crisis. The teacher explained the crisis to the class, tying it to the Navajo Nation and oppressive food transportation costs while prompting students to strategize solutions. Students proposed making/sending money to poorer areas, sending seeds abroad, and teaching foreigners sustainable farming techniques, ideas all inspired by the book. This conversation could have started and ended with students simply recounting their gardening knowledge. However, it transformed into CC as the teacher/ students used the text’s critical content to critique society while strategizing solutions.

While sharing classroom power, making critical questions, critiquing society, taking social justice action, and using texts with critical content were strategies found to promote CC, a few strategies considered essential to CC were not found within the transcripts. Notably, critical reflection is integral to CC (Heberle et al., 2020). Critical reflection involves interrogating previously held beliefs, privileges, or disadvantages while examining implicit bias (Medlock Paul, 2018). Despite analyzing over 70 hours of video recordings, we found no evidence of critical reflection although such reflection could have happened in teachers’ one-on-ones, which were not recorded. Furthermore, while texts with critical content proved essential for the development of CC, there was a missed opportunity to have students critically deconstruct these texts by exploring authors’ bias, explicitly examining how the texts framed the content, or questioning the content’s veracity (Medlock Paul, 2018). While we acknowledge the need for action in CC, critical reflection and deconstruction provide a foundation from which CC can grow.

CC deserves increased attention and enactment as “the capstone” of CRP (Morrison et al., 2008, p.443). By using the strategies of sharing classroom power, prompting students to make critical questions, critiquing society, taking social justice action, and using texts with critical content, educators may be better equipped to support elementary students in understanding, critiquing, and acting against oppressive social forces, improving both individual and societal outcomes. Our findings show that elementary students can deal with the complexity of social justice issues and start developing CC using these strategies. Further, our findings show that online learning can be a place to foster CC. However, despite the online mode and tools available, teacher facilitation remained critical in the virtual elementary classrooms studied (Viano & Darling-Aduana, 2024). Specifically, the need for strategies that foster critical reflection and interactivity means specific technology-based features are unlikely to make or break the successful enactment of strategies designated to develop CC. Fortunately, this means that many strategies used to successfully support the development of CC may be transferable to online instructional modes.