There has been an increased focus on utilizing critical consciousness-focused interventions to address complex, multidimensional socio-cultural problems, particularly health inequities. These interventions usually incorporate a critical dialogue component. However, there’s little guidance on how to implement, facilitate and evaluate critical dialogue to develop critical consciousness (i.e., reflecting and acting on sociopolitical inequities). This conceptual paper: 1) introduces critical dialogue and the tools used to implement critical dialogue from the literature; 2) details the development of the Community Wise intervention to present how Community Wise incorporated a critical dialogue component; 3) provides a brief overview of a proposed framework of critical consciousness development that the critical dialogue component of Community Wise could support; 4) provides an anecdotal exploration of the critical dialogue sessions used in the first pilot test of the intervention through the proposed framework of Transformative Consciousness; and 5) suggests practice guidelines for group work that incorporates facilitated critical dialogue.
The critical dialogue cornerstone: Suggested practices to guide implementation, facilitation and evaluation
Journal of Progressive Human Services, 33 (3), 244-270. doi: 10.1080/10428232.2022.2056866. PMCID: PMC9426411.