Developing Critical Curiosity in Adolescents

Critical consciousness refers to the ways in which individuals come to understand and challenge oppressive social forces. Philosopher-educator Paulo Freire argued that critical curiosity—an eagerness to learn more about and develop a deep understanding of issues of social justice—serves as an important catalyst to critical consciousness development. Yet, relatively little scholarship has considered how to foster critical curiosity in adolescents. The present qualitative study analyzed semi-structured interviews with 60 adolescents attending five Northeastern urban charter high schools with mission statements focused on fostering students’engagement in social action. Specifically, the study considered these students’perceptions of the impact of their respective schools’ social engagement programming upon their critical curiosity. The interviewswere analyzed using a flexible inductive/deductive approach drawn from the thematic analysis approach to qualitative analysis. The findings of this study indicate that students had a variety of conceptions of what stimulates their critical curiosity, including relevance, exposure to new perspectives, and receiving new, surprising information. Alignment with Freire’s conceptions of critical curiosity and current curiosity scholarship, implications for educators, limitations, and future directions are discussed. Many educators agree that fostering curiosity in the classroom is a worthy goal (Engel, 2011), yet little extant research has examined how to foster critical curiosity in adolescents. Critical curiosity refers to an eagerness to learn more about and develop a deep understanding of issues of social justice and inequity (Shor, 1992). Several scholars (e.g., Freire, 1970) consider critical curiosity to be a key precursor and catalyst of critical consciousness, which Brazilian philosopher-educator Paulo Freire (1970, 1998) described as the ways in which individuals come to understand and take action against systems of oppression. For Freire (1970), students become critically curious about their social worlds through engaging in dialogue. In so doing, they begin to understand systems of oppression and become motivated to challenge such oppressions (Freire, 1970, 1998; Lewis, 2012). In turn, developing such critical consciousness is associated with a host of positive outcomes, particularly for marginalized youth (Diemer, McWhirter, Ozer, & Rapa, 2015). Specifically, critical consciousness has been found to be associated with school engagement (O’Connor, 1997; Ramos-Zayas, 2003), academic achievement (Diemer & Blustein, 2006; Watts, Williams, & Jagers, 2003), resilience (Ginwright, 2010), occupational attainment (Diemer & Blustein, 2006), civic activism (Watts, Diemer & Voight, 2011), and voting behavior (Diemer & Li, 2011). Yet, despite these positive outcomes, limited empirical research has investigated antecedents to or mechanisms contributing to youth critical consciousness development (Diemer & Li, 2011). Given the proposed association between critical curiosity and critical consciousness development, additional research is needed examining how educators can spark students’ critical curiosity in the classroom. The present CONTACT Shelby Clark sclark@bu.edu Department of Applied HumanDevelopment, Boston University,  SilberWay, Boston,