Social Work as an Unwitting Enabler of Oppression and Disenfranchisement of the Masses: A Freirean Analysis of Social Workers' Perspectives on the Government of Zimbabwe's COVID-19 Response

Social workers have been actively involved as part of multi-disciplinary teams responding to the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. In Zimbabwe, a WhatsApp platform with more than 200 social workers was set up to serve as a learning and sharing platform and to coordinate social work interventions. On this platform, varied perspectives and group dynamics are apparent. The prevailing discourse on the platform around how the government is responding to the crisis offers interesting lenses through which to understand the role of social work in the post-colonial developmental let-down. This chapter analyses the views of social workers as reflected in the WhatsApp conversations. Using a Freirean lens, we locate social workers' perspectives as being reflective of the active role that social work has played over the years as a tool in the hands of government that enables continued oppression and disenfranchisement of the masses through social work practice, which is reflective of false generosity, placatory practice, and activism devoid of transformative praxis. Rather than being true to its social justice mission, we argue that in Zimbabwe, just as is prevailing in the global sphere, social work is failing its social justice mission, which should focus on challenging structural and institutional sources of oppression and disenfranchisement. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

The role of multisystemic resilience in fostering critical agency: UK adolescents during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Critical agency (CA) refers to an individual's feeling of power in relation to social inequalities. Research has demonstrated that high CA is associated with positive adolescent outcomes, however, less is known about what supports are important for its development. Moreover, a large majority of the literature is based on studies from the US and various countries in Africa; although the UK is saturated with inequalities there is little research within a UK context. In this paper we examine (a) the validity of using an existing measure of CA with a sample of UK adolescents and (b) the extent to which resilience supports account for variance in CA. Our analysis identified two distinct factors of CA: justice-oriented and community-oriented. High CA in both factors was explained by resilience supports associated with peer relationships (p < 0.01). Our findings push us towards new relational, ecological ways of understanding adolescent CA. We close by instantiating a translational framework for those devising policies in support of youth resilience and CA. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-023-04578-1.

Discussing Race: Pathways and Barriers to Critical Consciousness Development for Chinese American Youth

This dissertation project examines the interplay between Chinese American youth's racial socialization experiences and their critical consciousness development. Discussing Race pursues three central questions: 1) How do Chinese American youth develop an understanding of and response to systemic racism? 2) What implications might their racial socialization experiences have on their understanding and appreciation of their own racial/ethnic identity? 3) How might their racial socialization experiences influence their empathy for and solidarity with other marginalized communities? To investigate these questions, 76 high-school-aged youth (primarily Chinese American) based in Chicago were surveyed and interviewed throughout 2020-2021. Survey and interview questions focused on youths' past and recent race-related interactions across a variety of primary socializing settings (home, school, peers, online spaces, and Asian American-serving youth programs/groups), including how conversations and messages about race contributed to or complicated young people's understanding of systemic racism, positive ethnic-racial identity development, political engagement, and perceived relationship to other marginalized communities. The multi-stage analysis of the interview data followed a mixed grounded theory and thematic analysis approach.One of the central findings of the study is that Chinese American youth recognized the need and urgency to address racism, but were largely unsupported to do so because of pervasive flat narratives about Asian Americans as model minorities. As a result, many youth sought out resources to educate themselves and others as well as to advocate for their needs and the needs of other students of color. Specifically, social media, conversations with peers, and participation in Asian American youth groups and organizations served as consciousness-raising avenues.Despite youth's proactive efforts, experiencing racial invisibility throughout the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to complicate young people's critical consciousness development. The persisting silence around anti-Asian racism amidst a year of heightened racial animosity toward Asian communities, and following increased dialogue about racism encouraged by the Black Lives Matter movement, contributed to feelings of frustration for many youth and caused some to question the racial oppression of Asian Americans. Additionally, the lack of urgency and concern observed by young people problematically discouraged empathy for other marginalized communities and perpetuated ignorance about systemic racism.This finding underscores a critical missed developmental opportunity for Chinese American youth, in large part, because participants were afforded many opportunities throughout 2020 to learn about the experiences of Black communities. These sustained and in-depth learning opportunities encouraged the young people to engage in conversations about anti-Blackness with family members despite encountering a myriad of communication challenges and not having supports to navigate such conversations. Indeed, the unavailability of opportunities and resources to help youth develop an understanding how anti-Asian racism intersects with and reinforces the oppression of Black communities may inhibit critical consciousness development and anti-racist solidarity efforts.This project highlights the importance of not only disentangling the racialized experiences of Asian American youth from the experiences of other minoritized students but also highlighting the opportunities to help young people contextualize their experiences under White supremacy. Further, it calls attention to a need for schools and youth organizations to learn from and support existing anti-racist efforts led by young people. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Shattering the glass ceiling through purpose development: an intersectional examination of the role of adversity and mentoring among adolescent girls

Adolescent girls have reached unprecedented levels of success in today's society. Simultaneously, many adolescent girls face adversities and their mental health remains a concern (Schramal et al., 2010;Spencer et al., 2018;). Positive Youth Development scholars continues to explore how society can best support adolescent girls as they navigate key developmental milestones (Lerner et al., 2005;Damon, 2004). Importantly, research has solidified a number of benefits of Youth Purpose (i.e., a long-term, committed, directed aspiration, with a prosocial desire). Youth Purpose is considered a key developmental asset, and contributes to thriving. Indeed, having a sense of purpose can serve as a protective factor for individuals and help bolster their overall well-being (Liang et al., 2018;Liang et al, 2017;Damon et al., 2003). Youth purpose along with Post Traumatic Growth can positively impact individuals facing adversities (Kashdan & McKnight, 2009;Tedeschi & Lawrence, 2004). Similarly, mentoring relationships are associated with numerous positive outcomes including the development of purpose (Dubois & Rhodes, 2006;Lerner, 2004;Liang et al., 2017). While youth purpose is well documented (Damon et al., 2003;Hill et al., 2010), there is limited research on purpose development for adolescent girls from marginalized backgrounds. Given the profound benefits of purpose, additional research is warranted on how purpose is cultivated in marginalized adolescent girls. This dissertation sought to expand the literature and better understand how adversity relates to purpose development, during the adolescent years and how mentoring relationships can contribute to this development. Additional research is needed to focus on one of the most vulnerable populations, adolescent girls from marginalized backgrounds, and to discover ways to help protect their mental health and well- being as they continue to thrive in society. This study included 13 interviews with adolescent girls from marginalized backgrounds. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data and five major themes emerged. Analyses suggested that while these participants experiences endured adverse experiences, they maintained a positive outlook on life, and their future. With the help of their mentors, and through the development of critical consciousness, participants were able to utilize adverse experiences to help inform their sense of purpose. Data was collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. This crucial time period allowed for the collection of exemplary data, which revealed how adolescent girls utilized the pandemic as a time for self-growth, and how they conceptualized their purpose with respect to the pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Critically conscious school leaders' sensemaking of social-emotional learning

A growing number of schools are adopting social-emotional learning (SEL) programs to address students' social, emotional, and academic needs. The proliferation of school-based SEL programs has spurred more research to investigate the ways in which educators enact SEL in schools. However, very few studies have considered the role school leaders have in leading and implementing school-based SEL. Scholars have determined that school leaders play a vital role in deciding how school-based initiatives and policies are taken up. Furthermore, research has determined that a person's sensemaking of policy messages, which involves their prior beliefs and consciousness, influences the ways in which a policy or initiative, such as SEL, is enacted. Using sensemaking theory and critical consciousness as an analytical tool, this study analyzes how critically conscious school leaders make sense of SEL in order to center students' race and culture. I amplify the voices of critically conscious school leaders and their leadership actions to offer a robust theorization of unconventional employment of SEL that centers students experiencing marginalization because of their race and culture. This research inquiry answered three interrelated questions centered on education policy, school leadership, social-emotional learning, and race and culture: 1) What are Washington State's school-based SEL policy messages? a) What was the nature of the development of Washington State's school-based SEL standards? 2) How do critically conscious K-5 school leaders make sense of school-based SEL messages? a) What beliefs and conceptions do these K-5 school leaders have about SEL? 3) What are the school leaders' actions that lead towards centering students' race and culture in SEL?I conducted a critical qualitative multiple-case study to answer the research questions guiding this inquiry. I collected SEL documents from Washington State's Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) website and received copies of OSPI's meeting agendas, notes, and other materials from their SEL Benchmarks Workgroup, totaling 103 documents. Furthermore, I purposefully selected school leaders from two schools in Washington State to interview and observe. During the 2020-2021 school year, I collected data from Iris Elementary and Pine Elementary during the Covid-19 pandemic, when both schools increased their SEL efforts. Iris is a dual-language immersion school, while Pine resides on a federally recognized Native American reservation. Both schools have a majority of students who are marginalized in schools and society because of their race and culture. During the six months of data collection, I conducted 25 semi-structured interviews with thirteen individual school leaders. Due to the pandemic, I could not observe the school leaders in person;however, I observed 64 meetings via video conferencing platforms. The findings from this study show that the ways in which standards are developed send particular messages to the people charged with implementing the policy. Secondly, this study revealed that school leaders' sensemaking of SEL revealed that their prior beliefs, racial and cultural school context, and opportunities to critically self-reflect mattered for how they made sense of SEL. Lastly, this study found that school leaders' actions illustrated how they shaped and shifted their respective schools' culture by focusing on community values and justice to create an anti-racist environment. In short, I found that policy design matters for messaging, school leaders' ideologies and racial and cultural context dictate how a policy is understood, and SEL has the latitude to disrupt the status quo by attending to students' race and culture. These findings have implications for education policy design, school leadership and SEL research, and sensemaking and critical consciousness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Popular education before and after covid: Neapolitan experiences

In this article, we will try to follow a narrative trajectory that, through the first-person story of Marta as a volunteer educator, introduces some of the territorial educational experiences organized by local commons in the city of Naples. The nature of these spaces tries to put the needs of the common individual at the center and each educational reality narrated, each in its own way, tries to create community through dialogic actions with the people living in the neighborhood, engaging in the promotion of paths of mutual help, built from below starting by sharing practices of community support. In the story of educational experiences, experiences that have abruptly interrupted with the pandemic, we will let ourselves be supported by the theoretical frame of reference of Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy, just as we will try to reflect, in terms of spaces as horizons of educationally sustainable possibilities, the post-pandemic situation. L'educazione popolare prima e dopo il covid: esperienze partenopee. In questo articolo cercheremo di percorrere una traiettoria narrativa che, attraverso il racconto in prima persona di Marta in qualità di educatrice volontaria, introduca ad alcune delle esperienze educative territoriali organizzate dai beni comuni presenti nel territorio di Napoli. La natura di questi spazi prova a mettere al centro i bisogni del cittadino ed ogni realtà educativa narrata, ognuna a suo modo, cerca di creare comunità attraverso azioni dialogiche con gli abitanti dei diversi quartieri, impegnandosi nella promozione di percorsi di mutuo aiuto, costruiti dal basso a partire dalla condivisione di pratiche a supporto della comunità. Nel racconto delle esperienze educative, esperienze che si sono interrotte bruscamente con la pandemia, ci lasceremo supportare dalla cornice di riferimento teorico della pedagogia critica di Paulo Freire, così come proveremo a riflettere, in termini di spazi quali orizzonti di possibilità educativamente sostenibili, la situazione post-pandemica.

What knowledge matters in health professions education?

What knowledge matters in health professions education is an issue of debate in the literature, foregrounded by the COVID-19 pandemic and informed by calls for students who are not only clinically competent, but also critically conscious of global health inequity. Building on this work, this paper explores what kinds of knowledge are legitimated in two health science programmes at a South African university. Thirty-four health professions teachers participated in the study. Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) Specialisation was used as an analytical framework, with Epistemic and Social Relations as coding categories. Results revealed the dominance of a knowledge code, with the social dispositions and attributes relating to the development of critical consciousness often not considered knowledge at all. Our contention is that both knowledge and social dispositions are equally important in the development of future healthcare professionals and that collaborative curriculum conversations are needed to enable them being interwoven throughout curricula. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Discussing Race: Pathways and Barriers to Critical Consciousness Development for Chinese American Youth

This dissertation project examines the interplay between Chinese American youth's racial socialization experiences and their critical consciousness development. Discussing Race pursues three central questions: 1) How do Chinese American youth develop an understanding of and response to systemic racism? 2) What implications might their racial socialization experiences have on their understanding and appreciation of their own racial/ethnic identity? 3) How might their racial socialization experiences influence their empathy for and solidarity with other marginalized communities? To investigate these questions, 76 high-school-aged youth (primarily Chinese American) based in Chicago were surveyed and interviewed throughout 2020-2021. Survey and interview questions focused on youths' past and recent race-related interactions across a variety of primary socializing settings (home, school, peers, online spaces, and Asian American-serving youth programs/groups), including how conversations and messages about race contributed to or complicated young people's understanding of systemic racism, positive ethnic-racial identity development, political engagement, and perceived relationship to other marginalized communities. The multi-stage analysis of the interview data followed a mixed grounded theory and thematic analysis approach.One of the central findings of the study is that Chinese American youth recognized the need and urgency to address racism, but were largely unsupported to do so because of pervasive flat narratives about Asian Americans as model minorities. As a result, many youth sought out resources to educate themselves and others as well as to advocate for their needs and the needs of other students of color. Specifically, social media, conversations with peers, and participation in Asian American youth groups and organizations served as consciousness-raising avenues.Despite youth's proactive efforts, experiencing racial invisibility throughout the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to complicate young people's critical consciousness development. The persisting silence around anti-Asian racism amidst a year of heightened racial animosity toward Asian communities, and following increased dialogue about racism encouraged by the Black Lives Matter movement, contributed to feelings of frustration for many youth and caused some to question the racial oppression of Asian Americans. Additionally, the lack of urgency and concern observed by young people problematically discouraged empathy for other marginalized communities and perpetuated ignorance about systemic racism.This finding underscores a critical missed developmental opportunity for Chinese American youth, in large part, because participants were afforded many opportunities throughout 2020 to learn about the experiences of Black communities. These sustained and in-depth learning opportunities encouraged the young people to engage in conversations about anti-Blackness with family members despite encountering a myriad of communication challenges and not having supports to navigate such conversations. Indeed, the unavailability of opportunities and resources to help youth develop an understanding how anti-Asian racism intersects with and reinforces the oppression of Black communities may inhibit critical consciousness development and anti-racist solidarity efforts.This project highlights the importance of not only disentangling the racialized experiences of Asian American youth from the experiences of other minoritized students but also highlighting the opportunities to help young people contextualize their experiences under White supremacy. Further, it calls attention to a need for schools and youth organizations to learn from and support existing anti-racist efforts led by young people. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Who has to act? A qualitative exploration of emerging adults' critical consciousness during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic and violence against people of Color during 2020 brought troubling racial inequities to the forefront of American discourse. In line with the Critical Consciousness (CC) and Social Justice Youth Development (SJYD) frameworks, emerging adults may have developed their capacity for critical reflection, motivation, and action against systemic inequities. We drew from interviews with 27 emerging adults (ages 18-23) across the US, and used thematic analysis to explore differences in their reflections, motivations to act, and actions based on their racial/ethnic identification. We found nuanced variability in their critical reflections based on self, social, or global awareness and experiences of marginalization. White and Asian emerging adults used vague language or expressed feeling their reflections were insufficient. Black and Latinx emerging adults emphasized the importance of education and raising awareness. Although all emerging adults took action based on a sense of duty, few engaged in critical action; decisions to take in-person action varied based on whether they viewed racism or COVID-19 as a greater threat. Findings demonstrate that emerging adults' experiences of racialization may have related to their CC development. We share implications for community psychologists conducting antiracist research addressing White fragility and dismantling racial hierarchy.

Critically conscious school leaders' sensemaking of social-emotional learning

A growing number of schools are adopting social-emotional learning (SEL) programs to address students' social, emotional, and academic needs. The proliferation of school-based SEL programs has spurred more research to investigate the ways in which educators enact SEL in schools. However, very few studies have considered the role school leaders have in leading and implementing school-based SEL. Scholars have determined that school leaders play a vital role in deciding how school-based initiatives and policies are taken up. Furthermore, research has determined that a person's sensemaking of policy messages, which involves their prior beliefs and consciousness, influences the ways in which a policy or initiative, such as SEL, is enacted. Using sensemaking theory and critical consciousness as an analytical tool, this study analyzes how critically conscious school leaders make sense of SEL in order to center students' race and culture. I amplify the voices of critically conscious school leaders and their leadership actions to offer a robust theorization of unconventional employment of SEL that centers students experiencing marginalization because of their race and culture. This research inquiry answered three interrelated questions centered on education policy, school leadership, social-emotional learning, and race and culture: 1) What are Washington State's school-based SEL policy messages? a) What was the nature of the development of Washington State's school-based SEL standards? 2) How do critically conscious K-5 school leaders make sense of school-based SEL messages? a) What beliefs and conceptions do these K-5 school leaders have about SEL? 3) What are the school leaders' actions that lead towards centering students' race and culture in SEL?I conducted a critical qualitative multiple-case study to answer the research questions guiding this inquiry. I collected SEL documents from Washington State's Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) website and received copies of OSPI's meeting agendas, notes, and other materials from their SEL Benchmarks Workgroup, totaling 103 documents. Furthermore, I purposefully selected school leaders from two schools in Washington State to interview and observe. During the 2020-2021 school year, I collected data from Iris Elementary and Pine Elementary during the Covid-19 pandemic, when both schools increased their SEL efforts. Iris is a dual-language immersion school, while Pine resides on a federally recognized Native American reservation. Both schools have a majority of students who are marginalized in schools and society because of their race and culture. During the six months of data collection, I conducted 25 semi-structured interviews with thirteen individual school leaders. Due to the pandemic, I could not observe the school leaders in person;however, I observed 64 meetings via video conferencing platforms. The findings from this study show that the ways in which standards are developed send particular messages to the people charged with implementing the policy. Secondly, this study revealed that school leaders' sensemaking of SEL revealed that their prior beliefs, racial and cultural school context, and opportunities to critically self-reflect mattered for how they made sense of SEL. Lastly, this study found that school leaders' actions illustrated how they shaped and shifted their respective schools' culture by focusing on community values and justice to create an anti-racist environment. In short, I found that policy design matters for messaging, school leaders' ideologies and racial and cultural context dictate how a policy is understood, and SEL has the latitude to disrupt the status quo by attending to students' race and culture. These findings have implications for education policy design, school leadership and SEL research, and sensemaking and critical consciousness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

What knowledge matters in health professions education?

What knowledge matters in health professions education is an issue of debate in the literature, foregrounded by the COVID-19 pandemic and informed by calls for students who are not only clinically competent, but also critically conscious of global health inequity. Building on this work, this paper explores what kinds of knowledge are legitimated in two health science programmes at a South African university. Thirty-four health professions teachers participated in the study. Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) Specialisation was used as an analytical framework, with Epistemic and Social Relations as coding categories. Results revealed the dominance of a knowledge code, with the social dispositions and attributes relating to the development of critical consciousness often not considered knowledge at all. Our contention is that both knowledge and social dispositions are equally important in the development of future healthcare professionals and that collaborative curriculum conversations are needed to enable them being interwoven throughout curricula.

The Silver Linings of COVID-19 and Racism Pandemics?

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has brought health and social disparities to the fore, and intensified bias and racism in the U.S. and globally. In the context of discriminatory rhetoric and anti-Asian sentiments voiced by prominent political figures, Asian Americans have been disproportionately targeted with injustice, scapegoating, and overt racism. Amid heightened sociocultural stress and national divisiveness, the present study explored whether "silver linings" might be found in the form of increased ethnic-racial identity exploration, ethnic-racial socialization, and civic engagement. Survey data from 200 Asian American parents of adolescents (58% mothers;63% foreign born, 37% U.S. born) suggest that awareness of discrimination against Asian Americans post-COVID-19 was associated with greater identity exploration and fewer socialization messages that minimize the importance of race. Awareness of discrimination against other minoritized groups (i.e., Native and Black Americans, Latinxs) was associated with greater post-COVID-19 activism. Additional socialization messages (i.e., promotion of equality, cultural pluralism) were associated with lifetime discrimination experiences and parent gender. Although negative consequences of the pandemic are indisputable, our results offer a small glimmer of hope in terms of building resistance and momentum. What is the public significance of this article? In the face of ethnic-racial bias and racism post-coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Asian American parents of adolescents explore their ethnic-racial identities, communicate positive ethnic-racial socialization messages to their children, and engage in community activism. Although negative consequences of the pandemic are indisputable, there do appear to be "silver linings" that can build resistance and civic engagement.

A 21st Century Take on Racial-Ethnic Socialization: Patterns of Competency and Content among Diverse Parents of Color

Racial-ethnic socialization is a process where parents pass beliefs and behaviors to their children, including critical reflections on race and racism. Currently, it is not well known across racial/ethnic groups in the U.S how parents’ socialization competency (confidence, skills, and stress surrounding the delivery of racial-ethnic socialization) coalesces with the frequency with which they deliver different types of socialization messages (socialization content). The current study utilizes latent profile analysis to examine racial-ethnic socialization content and competency patterns among 203 Black, 194 Latinx, and 188 Asian American parents (n = 585, Mage = 44.46, SD = 9.14, 59.70% mothers) with children 10–18 years old (Mage = 14.30, SD = 2.49, 50.3% female). Furthermore, we relate profiles to sociodemographic and relevant factors posited to impact socialization competency and content delivery, namely, discrimination and critical consciousness dimensions (reflection, motivation, action). We observed three parental profiles: Less Prepared Stressed Low Frequency (LPSLF;n = 285), Prepared Low Stress Frequent (PLSF;n = 204), and Prepared Stressed Frequent (PSF;n = 96) socializers. Profile differences emerged on parental and youth sociodemographic factors, lifetime discrimination exposure, and each parental critical consciousness dimension. This study lays a foundation for the combined study of racial-ethnic socialization competence and content in diverse groups, a practice crucial to understanding 21st century parenting.

Exploring civic behaviors amongst college students in a year of national unrest.

This study examined the role of demographics, civic beliefs, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in association with distinct forms of civic participation. College students were recruited across 10 institutions of higher education to complete an online survey. Bivariate, multivariable linear, and logistic regressions were performed. Findings indicated that participants from traditionally marginalized backgrounds were more likely to engage in systemchallenging forms of civic participation and community engagement than those from more privileged backgrounds. Participants who rated high in critical reflection, viewed racism as a key issue, and were heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic were also more likely to engage in system-challenging forms of civic participation. Participants who endorsed beliefs supporting current systems of power were more likely to report they intended to vote. Results highlight implications for antiracist activism, community engagement, and traditional political civic behaviors.

Associations between critical consciousness and well-being in a national sample of college students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Critical consciousness (CC) may promote well-being, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a national survey of 707 college students conducted in April 2020, we first validated the Short Critical Consciousness Scale (ShoCCS) among youth groups not often specifically examined in CC measurement (i.e., Asian, immigrant-origin, LGBQ+, and women youth). Next, we examined associations between ShoCCS subscales and validated measures of both anxiety (Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7) and hopefulness (The Individual-Differences Measure in Hopefulness). The ShoCCS achieved measurement invariance across racial/ethnic groups and immigrant-origin status, and partial invariance among LGBQ+ and women-identifying youth. We found critical reflection and action associated with anxiety for the full sample, but no evidence of moderation by sociodemographic factors. ShoCCS subscales were differentially associated with hopefulness for Asian youth and LGBQ+ youth. This study contributes to the evolution of CC measurement and extends the field by identifying well-being associations during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pushing the envelope: The who, what, when, and why of critical consciousness.

Deep-seated structural racism in the U.S. has been thrown into bold relief by the racially disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 and a series of highly visible police murders of Black Americans. Longstanding and intergenerational economic inequalities have been laid bare by the ensuing economic recession. This special issue's focus on how people critique, challenge, negotiate and change inequities is therefore particularly (and, unfortunately) relevant and timely. These three papers approach critical consciousness from three distinct angles. In this commentary, I will offer several points of praise for these three papers, along with a few suggestions on ways that the authors' lines of thinking could be extended or more nuanced. I will identify a few themes that cut across these three papers: (1) the importance of focusing on critical action, (2) how these papers advance our thinking on how, when, and for whom CC develops, with specific attention paid to the social identities, life phases, and events that impact CC, and (3) a deepening of our understanding of the antecedents and consequences of CC. In reviewing these three papers, I consider how each of them adds to the collective conversation about the ways that we might recognize, challenge, and work to change marginalizing systems and transform inequity to create a more just world.