Examining the Role of a Program for Youth Advocates in Critical Consciousness Development - Article

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious

A national, residential one-week program for youth advocates is evaluated for its contribution to adolescents’ critical consciousness. A survey compares participants with an engaged comparison group at baseline, one week, and six months post-program. Using difference-in-differences models with covariates, youth show increased low- and high-risk political actions after one week and higher high-risk action frequency after six months, alongside gains in critical agency, with no effects for critical reflection. Propensity-score robustness checks largely replicate the results.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages23

Reading Time58 min

AccessFree to download

Study overview

Program design and expected mechanisms

Critical consciousness framework

Measurement and analytical approach

Findings and implications

AERA Open January-December 2025, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 1–23 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584251375052 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2025. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Examining the Role of a Program for Youth Advocates in Critical Consciousness Development Laura Wray-Lake Christopher M. Wegemer University of California, Los Angeles Elan C. Hope Policy Research Associates, Inc. Kristina Cổ-Đoàn University of Toronto Qin L. Kramer Northeastern University Emily Greytak American Civil Liberties Union The ACLU’s National Advocacy Institute (NAI) is a one-week residential program designed to build youth’s capacities to advocate for civil rights and challenge injustices. This study assessed its role in fostering adolescents’critical consciousness. We surveyed NAIparticipants anda comparison group of engaged youth before, one week after (N = 58(NAI)/166(comparison)), and six months after the program (N = 47(NAI)/165(comparison)) . Using difference-in-differences analyses with covariates, NAI youth increased their likelihood of taking low-and high-risk political actions after one week and high-risk action frequency after six months, relative to the comparison group. NAI youth increased three forms of critical agency one week and, marginally, six months post-program. No associations were found for critical reflection. As a robustness check, propensity score models mostly replicated results. Findings show the promise of short, intensive programs for sparking growth in critical agency and action and highlight the need for more critical consciousness-raising spaces. Keywords: Activism, adolescence, civic engagement, critical consciousness, critical thinking, longitudinal studies, politics, program evaluation, quasi-experimental analysis, social justice, survey research Adolescents lead social movements and fight for social justice in powerful ways, such as by organizing for gun violence prevention, challenging racial and socioeconomic inequalities in schools, speaking out for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer rights, and countering hostile rhetoric about immigrants (Conner, 2024; Webster, 2021) . To support effective and sustained activism and advocacy efforts, young people need continuous opportunities to strengthen their critical consciousness, i.e., deep awareness of systemic inequalities, capacities to affect change, and actions that challenge inequalities and advance equity (Rapa & Godfrey, 2023) . Resources and supports that grow adolescents’ critical consciousness are often most accessible through civic organizations with social justice missions (Watts et al., 2002), yet more critical consciousness–raising program opportunities are needed for young people, and the impacts of these programs are not often assessed empirically or published (cf. Heberle et al., 2020) . To build knowledge of evidence-based practices, more research is needed to identify effective opportunities for adolescents’ critical consciousness development. This study examined a unique opportunity structure—a national, residential one-week program for high school students focused on civil rights and liberties, led by the Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages ([https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage](https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage)). Wray-Lake et al. American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The program aims to build young peop

FAQs

What program is assessed in the study?

The study assesses a national, one-week residential program for youth advocates focused on civil rights and liberties, led in a supportive communal environment.

How was the program’s impact evaluated?

Researchers surveyed program participants and a comparison group before, one week after, and six months after the program, using difference-in-differences analyses with covariates and propensity-score robustness checks.

Which outcomes improved after the program?

Participants increased their likelihood of taking low- and high-risk political actions after one week and increased high-risk action frequency after six months, along with gains in critical agency.

Did the program affect critical reflection?

No associations were found for critical reflection, even though other components such as critical agency showed improvements.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious