Title
4 - Critical Consciousness in Early to Middle Childhood
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
4-20-2023
Abstract
The literature on critical consciousness (CC) has seen rapid growth in the past ten years. However, the literature has given very little attention to CC in preadolescent children. In this chapter, we contend that the sociopolitical and civic elements of early to middle childhood development have been understudied. Emphasizing the familial, social, and educational systems that structure the lives of young children, we elaborate on the evidence that young children hold the capacity for understanding social inequities, becoming empowered to work for social change, and acting against injustice, and we provide concrete examples of how CC might be identified and measured at different stages of the early childhood developmental period. In addition, we show that the structural emphasis of the CC literature and related literatures (e.g., work on critical race theory) adds much-needed context to the study of bias and stereotyping in early childhood.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009153751.005
ISBN
9781009153751
Repository Citation
Heberle, A., Faragó, F., & Hoch, N. (2023). Critical consciousness in early to middle childhood. In L. Rapa & E. Godfrey (Eds.), Critical consciousness: Expanding theory and measurement. In B. Christens (Series Ed.), Contemporary social issues (pp. 88-119). Cambridge University Press.
