Promoting Critical Consciousness in Undergraduate Social Work Classrooms

Developing critical consciousness is key to social workers becoming competent practitioners, but due to its multifaceted nature, finding a single classroom strategy to effectively engage all students in this process is challenging. Problem-posing education is a method that encourages students to examine the sociopolitical, historical, and cultural causes of problems in their lives. It promotes critical questioning of the status quo, which stimulates the process of critical consciousness development. The author argues here that social work educators can maximize the engagement of undergraduate students in this complex process by utilizing Pitner & Sakamoto's Critical Consciousness Conceptual Model to guide the implementation of problemposing education.