What is Critical Action

This chapter describes a longitudinal case study investigating the use of feminist pedagogy to foster preservice teachers' critical consciousness in a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program. Courses in the program were revised to intentionally employ the feminist pedagogical elements of personal experience, power awareness, community-building, identity awareness, and intentional reflection. Coursework, focus groups, and interviews from three cohorts of teacher candidates were analyzed for dimensions of critical consciousness according to Freirean principles. Across cohorts, students demonstrated a deep awareness of racialized systems of power that affect educational processes. Most students were able to decode educational rhetoric and challenge the assumptions and biases embedded within. While all students expressed a deep commitment to inclusive teaching and could articulate multicultural teaching methods, most admitted to not yet having the depth of knowledge necessary and/or the emotional fortitude to combat systems of inequity beyond their classrooms.