College and Career Ready and Critically Conscious: Asset-Building With Latinx Immigrant Youth

Abstract

A growing body of evidence supports critical consciousness as a developmental asset for young people, including its benefits for educational and vocational outcomes. National dynamics and policies in the U.S., such as restricting immigration and asylum, have raised the salience of critical consciousness as a protective factor for the career development of Latinx immigrant youth. In this manuscript, we first review the nature and benefits of critical consciousness for Latinx immigrant youth. We then highlight how college and career readiness (CCR) and the components of critical consciousness (CC) can be simultaneously fostered among Latinx immigrant high school students, drawing upon our own work in the context of an afterschool program. We introduce a framework to illustrate this integration, and describe a series of intervention activities and processes designed to simultaneously build CC and CCR. Finally, we provide recommendations and describe caveats and challenges to developing classroom-based career education curricula that integrate CCR and CC.

Social justice activism and critical agency among undocumented students: Coping mediators between discrimination and depression.

“…Providers may also be able to partner with other student serving units on campus, with faculty, and with students to design and deliver programmatic interventions that promote SJA involvement and critical consciousness development. An example of such an intervention is the asset-building program for Latinx immigrant students implemented by McWhirter et al (2021). Such a program may be adapted to integrate a greater focus on mental health, in addition to the educational and career outcomes.…”

Youth Perceptions of Their Futures, Society, and the Work Landscape: A Psychology of Working Perspective

“…Adolescents might also be asked to critically consider how their privilege and their efforts to sustain privilege are shaping their lives and career choices (Lapour & Heppner, 2009). Lessons on advocacy skills and community action projects have been incorporated into career interventions with Latinx youth to foster critical agency and action with promising results (McWhirter et al, 2019; 2021), but need to be designed and evaluated with varied populations. Social justice pedagogies developed in K-12 and higher education offer additional examples of methods to foster critical consciousness across social class (Howard, 2010; Seider & Graves, 2020), but also reveal the complexity and resistance encountered when disrupting beliefs that are shaped by students’ families, communities, and the broader culture (Howard, 2010).…”

Critical Consciousness in Vocational Psychology: A Vision for the Next Decade and Beyond

“…Additionally, the practical framework for healing ethno-racial trauma (HEART) among immigrant communities, describes how providers may use strategies that foster sanctuary, liberation, and resistance to enhance interventions aimed at developing strengths-based coping (Chavez-Dueñas et al, 2019). To illustrate, aspects of this model could be manifested within career guidance and counseling with undocumented students by (a) creating physical spaces in which undocumented students experience support, (b) raising critical awareness of undocumented student assets and the barriers and risks they face, via Ally trainings for staff, instructors, and students, (c) providing resources including scholarships and information about career options that are open to those without documentation, and (d) advocating for systemic change at multiple levels to make possible studying, working, and participating in society without threat of deportation (Cadenas et al, 2018; McWhirter, Cendejas, et al, 2021).…”

“…Vocational psychologists may deliver programmatic interventions, such as career education programs, that center on social-action projects that address community issues (Cadenas et al, 2020; McWhirter et al, 2021a, 2021b). Vocational psychologists can promote structural change and foster CC within institutions and as part of larger systems (e.g., education, healthcare, law, workforce), and advocate with and on behalf of clients, students, and communities that are impacted by social oppression in their career development.…”

“…In this line of thinking, engaging in career exploration, vocational identity development, values clarification, goal setting, and working toward educational goals may all serve as critical and intentional actions to resist oppressive conditions and processes. Critical action possibilities aligned with college and career readiness elements were proposed by McWhirter, Cendejas, et al (2021) and included, for example, contesting dominant definitions of “career success,” creating resumes that highlight community cultural wealth, and engaging with national advocacy groups such as United We Dream, to improve postsecondary education options. Such conceptualization may be of great relevance when applied to individuals who are members of social groups that have been excluded from educational and career opportunities in K-12 schools, institutions of higher education, and in the workforce.…”