Critical Consciousness is an Individual Difference

A Test of Measurement Equivalence in American, Ukrainian, and Iranian Universities

Bibliographic Data

ID12967393
AuthorsAdam Murry (0000-0002-0266-544X, University of Calgary, corresponding author), Mazna Patka (0000-0002-3598-0091, Zayed University)
Year2024
Volume18
Issue1
Pages143-164
Publication date2024-02-11
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueStudies in Social Justice (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1911-4788 • E-ISSN: 1911-4788
PublisherBrock University Library (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.26522/ssj.v18i1.4051
OpenAlexW4391749701
LanguageEN
References cited38

We live in a world in which we are socially, politically, economically, and environmentally connected with other people. Online communication has facilitated people coming together from different parts of the world. In terms of social justice movements, people have come together to share ideas about how they perceive social inequality and how to address it, which is what academics call critical consciousness. While scholars have explored critical consciousness in the American context, whether it operates on a global scale is under-explored. To address this question, we administered the Critical Consciousness Scale (a validated survey) with students from the United States, Iran, and Ukraine. Our findings demonstrate that critical consciousness maintains its factor structure across the entire sample, meaning that students from these three countries share some notions of critical consciousness. However, when comparing national groups, we find that critical consciousness is defined differently by students in different countries. In a practical sense, these findings mean that some aspects of critical consciousness are shared, but there are important differences in how it is perceived and how its components relate to one another. By attempting to understand critical consciousness internationally, this study serves as a cautionary narrative for international solidarity movements organized around the goal of social justice

Consciousness · Equivalence (formal languages · Linguistics · Political science · Pure mathematics · Sociology · Test (biology · Ukrainian · Education and Critical Thinking Development · Mathematics · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access