As a biology educator at a community college with a programmatic emphasis on healthcare careers, I am aware that one of the main roles of this institution is to provide pathways into careers in the health sciences. Many of my students have been underserved by the school and the healthcare systems in ways that are connected to larger forces of oppression. Therefore, Paulo Freire’s ideas are helpful in rethinking community college biology and preprofessional education for health sciences professionals.

In this essay, biology is the science context for making a case that education in community colleges should provide opportunities for developing learners’ critical consciousness and for a liberatory role of community colleges in our society. I begin with the importance of community colleges and the challenges encountered by their students, which leads me to introduce two common perspectives in the literature about the role of two-year colleges in an inequitable educational system. Then, I draw on Freire’s work to present a third possibility—liberatory community college education. I pull on cases from the literature to consider how education for critical consciousness has been discussed and documented in limited ways in science and healthcare professional training and degree programs. Relying on examples from a lesson plan on biases and racism in science and health care, I created and implemented in my classroom, illustrating how students’ learning of biology and professional preparation can be wrapped up with developing critical consciousness. These examples highlight the contradictions of purportedly apolitical biology curricula and the limitations of economic access without social transformation. I finish with reflections about the need for a Freirean liberatory perspective as a way to deal with the tensions of community colleges as providing pathways into careers for marginalized students while transforming the conditions that marginalize them.

Reflecting on the role of community colleges in an inequitable educational system

Community colleges are a substantial part of the USA higher education system as they are critical for the training and retraining of the workforce and enroll a high percentage of undergraduate students (approximately 35%) (National Center for Education Statistics 2020). Despite the recent pandemic-related decline in registration, the importance of these institutions to the USA educational and economic systems—especially as it relates to access for people of color and low socioeconomic status (SES)—is indisputable. Those who enroll in two-year institutions of higher education are more likely than those who attend four-year institutions to be older, female, and first-generation college students (Rodriguez, Cunningham, and Jordan 2017), and come from low-income families and minority ethnic groups (Bragg and Durham 2012). For instance, in the 2018–2019 academic year, approximately 44% of Black students and 55% of Latinx students who entered college did so at the community college level (American Association of Community Colleges 2020).

The K-12 education system has done students at two-year institutions a disservice, when compared with undergraduates entering four-year institutions, in terms of sufficient academic preparation required for postsecondary coursework and degree programs (National Center for Education Statistics 2001). Learners at these institutions are also more likely to enroll part-time as they face added burdens from working full-time and supporting dependents while enrolled in college (Provasnik and Planty 2008). The inequities of racial capitalism not only serve as an educational barrier for community college students, but are also frequently cited in terms of the role of these institutions as pathways into stable careers. The unemployment rate, for example, was at 5.6% for Black people, and 4.3% for Latinx people in 2019, when the overall national unemployment rate was 3.4% (Duffin 2020). This pattern was exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, and by mid-2021, these rates were 8.2% for Black people, 6.6% for Latinx people, and 4.8% for white people (Congressional Research Service 2021). Community colleges are often viewed as part of the remedy for these deep-seated disparities.

Two perspectives of community college education

But scholars disagree about the nature of the relationship between community colleges and economic access describing them as either a “second chance” or as a force for “social reproduction” (Levey 2006). For the holders of the first perspective, these institutions embody the accessible path to higher SES for students who are mostly people of color and women. Conversely, the second perspective considers the community college a “sorting mechanism,” created to keep marginalized people away from elite colleges and in blue-collar jobs (Levey 2006). Some argue that community colleges today serve to maintain the interests of the powers that be, governed by external pressures and ideologies such as neoliberalism and globalization (Cox and Sallee 2018). Evidence of these ideologies influencing community colleges includes: (1) the implementation of accreditation strategies based on business models (e.g., total quality management and continuous improvement); (2) the evolution of the discourse in establishments of public higher education likening students to customers (e.g., when registering online students place their selected courses into a “cart”); and (3) partnerships funded by multinational technology companies that impact educational reforms (Boyd 2011).

The consequences of the socially reproductive perspective for science education students are compounded, as this field, regardless of its appeals of objectivity and neutrality, has a long history of reproducing social inequality by not only excluding marginalized groups but also inequitably distributing assets and opportunities between students of different races and economic status (Morales-Doyle 2018). And even more worrisome are the circumstances for community college science learners, as, despite the promise of critical pedagogies and curricula for supporting community college students to fight the instructional and societal barriers they encounter, these approaches are scarce in the literature (Sleeter 2012). In mainstream STEM education journals, peer-reviewed papers rarely include community college science students or faculty; this underrepresentation makes studying how inequitable political and economic conditions have affected science students and programs at two-year institutions a difficult enterprise (Nenortas and Fields 2019). If we zoom in to biology education specifically, approximately 97% of professional, journal articles on biology education from 2012 to 2015 did not include community college topics or student population (Schinske, Balke, Bangera, Bonney, Brownell, Carter, and Corwin 2017).

After more than a decade as a biology educator at community colleges, I reflected on the implications of these contrasting views–community college as a “sorting mechanism” versus community college as a “second chance.” For instance, the “second chance” label seems, on the surface, benevolent, but in fact, demands further clarification. The idea of a second chance implies that students have done something wrong the first time around, which is why they ended up in a community college. However, I can attest to the multiple opportunities that two-year colleges provide to many students to reinvent themselves (e.g., a lawyer studying to be a veterinarian). I have similarly encountered several older students attempting to improve their work conditions (e.g., a 50-year-old nurse taking advanced biology classes to become a clinical nurse specialist). And even more impactful for me, I have witnessed economically marginalized students returning to or entering the workforce (e.g., a homeless student finishing her degree and finding a job for the first time). So while the “second chance” may refer to these and similar opportunities for advancement such as the ones above described, I asked myself, what are the limits of a “second chance” perspective? How might a “second chance” perspective, particularly for biology learners, such as my students, who mostly aimed to access health sciences, be socially reproductive? For example, the 50-year-old student gaining knowledge to achieve a higher degree in his nursing career may obtain increased economic mobility. Yet, the purpose of his education is still fundamentally about career pathways—in a sense, predetermined by what is “marketable.” In other words, the nursing student’s agency is constrained and limited by degree programs and career trajectories that may or may not work toward larger projects of social justice (Levin 2001).

It became evident to me that while a “second chance” perspective provides marginalized students with career pathways, it does not offer critical education. This analysis pushed me to start a Ph.D. in science education, where I searched for ways to transcend the binary of community colleges as either providing access or reproducing an inequitable system to question whether access to existing oppressive systems is a desirable goal. I looked to transform my curriculum using Paulo Freire’s critical consciousness pedagogy principles (Freire 2011). Daniel Morales-Doyle’s (2017) Justice Centered Science Pedagogy (JCSP) framework, which is heavily influenced by critical consciousness and culturally relevant pedagogy, was also helpful as I applied these principles to biology teaching. Education for critical consciousness and JCSP are transformative pedagogies that recognize the educational system as serving contradictory roles as oppressive systems and also offering possibilities for social transformation. Both educational approaches reject the idea of teaching topics in isolation from the historical, social, cultural, and political phenomena that circumscribe students’ lives.

Critical consciousness: a liberatory pedagogy

Freire (2011) developed critical consciousness pedagogy in his native Brazil in the 1960s. He recognized that Latin American educational systems were largely built to suppress creativity and limit learners’ freedom. Students were viewed as commodities to enter the workforce and maintain the status quo (Dos Santos 2009). Freire’s claims about Latin American education during his time can be applied to community colleges in the USA. Given that, as previously mentioned, these institutions exhibit a conscious and unconscious interweaving of public, nonprofit, and for-profit systems and discourses that have led to the continued exploitation of this essential public service at the expense of the population they serve (Brown, Blount, Dickinson, Better, Vitullo, Tyler, and Kisielewski 2016).

Freire (1993) believed that individuals and communities with the least power to alter their lives are most negatively affected. In critical pedagogy, the oppressed are empowered through developing critical consciousness, as knowledge is constructed by them and can eventually change the world (Dos Santos 2009). Dialogue constitutes another foundational tenet of critical pedagogy where education is considered critical to consciousness and transformation, which only occur when individuals incorporate in their studies a critical analysis of the struggles that directly affect them (Freire 1993). The identification of those struggles, what Freire called “generative themes,” is done in a cooperative process by the oppressed. In consequence, this pedagogy was conceived to be an engine for social change; in the end, he was offering an option between a pedagogy for “domestication” and another for “liberation,” between education for the human object and education for the human subject (Freire 2011).

Critical consciousness includes three components (Freire 1969): (1) encouraging students to acquire text literacy (read the word); (2) challenging them to reflect on their lives and social realities through a political lens (read the world); and (3) empowering them to participate in an effort to overcome injustice in the educational, political, and community domains (write the world). Freire considered it essential to start with students’ awareness of their reality and their needs since he believed education could not be achieved without having a curiosity for knowledge and the process of obtaining it (Dos Santos 2009). In other words, Freire saw learning as involving more than teaching and memorizing content but as a radical humanistic process that would allow the oppressed to reimagine and transform society.

He thought that to create opportunities for students to acquire literacy and to read and write their worlds, teachers needed to develop problem-posing pedagogies that unapologetically support the liberatory efforts of those who are exploited and silenced (Gutstein 2007). In the case of community colleges, to achieve these efforts, these institutions need to revert from their current neoliberal course. Instead of focusing on providing pawns for corporate profits, treating students as numbers to fill the needs of the workforce dictated by industry CEOs, they must offer an education for the well-being of all individuals and the sustainable and fair growth of communities (Mullin 2010). The key to the process of critical consciousness development lies in creating curricula in which social interaction plays an important role. An effective critically conscious classroom is one where the “participatory and collaborative discussion” among students, especially those from minoritized communities, is not only encouraged but purposely incorporated as a pedagogical tenet (Diemer, Kauffman, Koenig, Trahan, and Hsieh (2006, p. 445).

Despite Freire’s ideas being widely celebrated and implemented around the globe with great success, there are critiques of different perspectives of his work. Some detractors faulted him for ignoring some important social justice issues, leaving out the layered struggles of some marginalized communities (e.g., people of color and LGBTQ). Nevertheless, he recognized and directly addressed these critiques in Pedagogy of Hope (Freire 1994). The subsequent segment presents how critical consciousness’ components can be applied to science and healthcare careers curricula and provides an example from the literature of the latter.

Science and healthcare careers curricula as missed opportunities for teaching toward justice

By weaving the teaching of sciences together with teaching for social justice in community colleges, we could address several challenges affecting students who are often pushed out of these disciplines (Finkel 2018). Social justice-oriented science educators are scholar activists who position science as an empowering tool to challenge injustice and promote equity (Rivera-Maulucci 2012). Despite the recognition some scholars have given to the value of incorporating social justice in science education, curricula in STEM education have largely remained the same.

The traditional science curriculum was constructed for a white student body, and as a result, it accounts for the “knowledge, skill, and ability of students from an extremely narrow range of cultural and academic backgrounds” (Naynaha 2016, p. 198). Overall, the results of this monocultural curriculum have been disastrous (Carter 2007). For instance, students of color and low SES, who are exposed to traditional curricula that prioritize scientific career preparation over citizen development and civic responsibility, generally end up having fewer participatory opportunities in policy decisions (Finkel 2018). Those same communities turn out to be disproportionately affected by adverse environmental conditions (Mueller and Tippins 2012). Likewise, a high percentage of students struggle with the Western perspective in science education which has excluded people from marginalized groups (Rivera-Maulucci 2012). By adding a critical lens to science education, teachers and learners could foster the types of international communication and collaboration that are important for addressing issues such as poverty, unequal development, and environmental racism around the world (Tate 2001).

Unfortunately, health sciences programs, often considered among the most altruistic STEM pursuits, have not done much better. Robyn Caldwell and Courtney Cochran (2018) asserted that undergraduate nursing education insufficiently addresses social justice issues, even though these issues are central to nursing and other healthcare practices. Despite the social justice foundations of nursing as a discipline, nursing curricula and instruction privilege the physical over psychological and social components of individual and community well-being (Chinn and Kramer 2011).

The medical field struggles with attention to social justice issues as well. Even when they attempt to introduce social justice to their curriculum, their efforts often fall short (Dao, Goss, Hoekzema, Kelly, Logan, Mehta, and DeLisser 2017). For example, in response to the Liaison Committee on Medical Education directive that medical programs should attend not only the needs of highly diverse communities but also the inequities in health care, medical schools rushed to implement several programs “embracing” cultural competency (Kumagai and Lypson 2009). However, researchers found that only two of the 34 different cultural competency curricula they studied involved discussions of racism (Beach, Price, Gary, Robinson, Gozu, Palacio, and Powe 2005). This outcome, in light of the ongoing disparities in health care in the USA, is unacceptable (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2001). Evidence of racial and ethnic disparities in health care is, with few exceptions, remarkably consistent across a range of services, including mental health (Kindig and Thompson 2003). Most studies find that racial and ethnic disparities in health care remain even after adjustment for socioeconomic differences and other factors related to healthcare access (Kressin and Petersen 2001). The COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed millions globally, has continued to make clear that racial and economic disparities in health care are deeply entrenched. Recent research has demonstrated that physicians referred Black people exhibiting signs of COVID-19 infection for testing less frequently than other racial groups (Farmer 2020). In the city where I teach and live, data show the rate of COVID-19-related deaths for Black people to be approximately six times higher than white people (Reyes 2020).

Given the vast and persistent disparities and related social justice issues I have described, I articulate a vision for social justice education in community college STEM courses. The following section describes critical consciousness and its role in politically engaging students in the issues that their communities struggle with and empowering them to craft possible solutions to them.

Critical consciousness in science and healthcare careers curricula

The need to imbue healthcare careers education with Freire’s philosophy has been recognized as urgent, particularly in the USA where racism and inequities are so ingrained in the healthcare system (Clark, Humphries, Perez, Udoetuk, Bhatt, Domingo, and King 2019). The COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, has been a brutal reminder of healthcare disparities and unequal distribution of educational and health-related resources. These crises, together with the protests due to police brutality and lethality against Black people, compelled STEM scholars and professionals to deploy the campaign “#ShutDownSTEM,” to acknowledge that STEM education, research, and practice are still flooded with prejudice and racism and push institutions to start making changes (Morales-Doyle, Vossoughi, Vakil, and Bang 2020).

Utilizing the curriculum as a vehicle to introduce Freire’s ideas in science and healthcare careers education has several advantages: (1) designing a curriculum that is planned and crafted to include critical consciousness moves the critical educator to reflect on every aspect of their course (e.g., syllabus, student learning objectives, assessments, lectures, discussions, activities, laboratories), (2) building a critical pedagogical curriculum supports the instructor to engage in conversations with peers, students, administrators, and community members about the struggles of students’ communities and their links to their field of study, and (3) curricular transformations incorporating critical consciousness in sciences and healthcare careers’ courses—particularly at community colleges—are extremely rare, and as such, very much needed.

Dao, Goss, Hoekzema, Kelly, Logan, Mehta, and DeLisser (2017) highlight the lack of implementation of culturally responsive pedagogy and socially transformative science in medical training curricula. These authors critiqued the ways some existing introductory courses in healthcare careers curricula have attempted to integrate issues of social justice. Specifically, they explain how “an information delivery paradigm... can exoticize patients” or that adopting a “general open-minded orientation... can remain nebulous without clear grounding principles (Dao, Goss, Hoekzema, Kelly, Logan, Mehta, and DeLisser 2017, p. 335).” They argue that these approaches are based on a banking model that uncritically ignores power constructs, social context, and healthcare culture.

In response, they developed an “Introduction to Medicine and Society” (IMS) course with a social justice emphasis for first-year medical students in Pennsylvania. The course’s content, instead of transmitting discrete facts about patient types, supported students in engaging with complex questions bridging three relational domains, (1) the internal—connection to self; (2) the interpersonal—associations with patients and peers; and (3) the structural—relations with structures of power. For instance, the course asked students to analyze the healthcare system in its social and political contexts. The curriculum’s framework was partially based on the second and third components of Freiean critical consciousness: read the world and write the world. Students were guided to attain a thorough understanding of the world via explorations of humility, self-awareness, and ongoing learning (three of the skills emphasized in the internal domain). Simultaneously, to encourage the discernment and experience of social and political contradictions, the program engaged participants in empathetic imagination and relational communication (two of the skills emphasized in the interpersonal domain). Lastly, as critical consciousness demands action, students were supported to strengthen their involvement in advocacy and activism (two of the skills emphasized in the structural domain). Early data from the study indicated that the IMS model effectively informed, guided, and empowered medical students to critically analyze their experiences, interpersonal dynamics, and patient encounters.

In my context, where my students are also preparing for healthcare careers, I have taken up Freire’s ideas of critical pedagogy in the biology curriculum to push students beyond the analysis of personal experiences, interpersonal dynamics, and patient encounters. In the next section, I provide examples of how my students have critically reflected on the role of biological thinking in society, using Justice Centered Science Pedagogy (JCSP) as a framework.

Critical consciousness in a community college’s biology curriculum: an example from the classroom

To develop and implement a curriculum that treats science learners not as spectators but as actors and authors, and to nurture their critical consciousness, I turned to Freire’s (1969) three components of education for critical consciousness (read the word, read the world, and write the world). Dos Santos (2009) proposes elaborating Freire’s generative themes in science education, using socio-scientific issues as a way to move from a humanistic to a more political and transformative scientific education. Morales-Doyle (2017) suggests further specifying socio-scientific issues as social justice science issues (SJSI) that affect students’ communities, adding context and relevance. I sought to expand this line of thinking to a new context by infusing SJSI into the Biology II curriculum I taught at a community college with an institutional focus on preparing students for healthcare careers.

Developing a SJSJ and critically conscious curriculum. Each SJSI served as the basis for its own lesson plan, a laboratory if it had a practical component, or an activity if it did not. I developed this SJSI curriculum in collaboration with members of nonprofit organizations from communities surrounding the community college, scientists, STEM and community college’s faculty, and former Biology II students. The selection of the SJSI included in the curriculum was based on Christopher Emdin’s cogenerative principle (2011). Emdin’s cogenerative dialogues are conversations between learners and educators about what occurs to the students—in school and their lives—seeking to make decisions together about what can help improve their education. In planning for the implementation of the SJSI curriculum, I purposely engaged in formal and informal conversations with students about their experiences inside and outside of the classroom. I sought to learn about matters related to science that were relevant to them and their communities, matters which also involved understanding and critiquing power and various forms of domination and exploitation. This follows Freire’s proposal of digging into students’ sociocultural environments as a context for the educational process and therefore extends the connection between generative themes and SJSI (Freire 1969).

From the resulting list, I selected for my Biology II curriculum, SJSI with direct connections to health care due to the institutional and programmatic focus. These included: (1) climate change and food apartheid, (2) environmental justice, and (3) biases and racism in science and health care. For this paper, I concentrate on the lesson plan based on the third SJSI, titled “Undergirding Racism: Evolutionary Biology and The Myth of Racial Difference.” In the following section, I narrate this curriculum with illustrative examples of how students responded through their schoolwork, online learning reflections, and class discussions.

Implementing a SJSI and critically conscious lesson plan. “Undergirding Racism: Evolutionary Biology and The Myth of Racial Difference” was a three-class sequence that included a laboratory component and was spread out throughout the academic semester. This timing was designed to keep the conversations about the SJSI (biases and racism in science and health care) ongoing in order to sustain opportunities for students to engage in critical consciousness. The first session started in the fifth week of a sixteen-week semester. In this class, students collected, isolated, and amplified pieces of mtDNA from their saliva using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique. They also read and discussed what mtDNA sequence information tells us about patterns of human variation and the concept of race. Students were excited to find out what the analysis of their DNA would tell about their ancestry. For example, Hannah wrote [in an online reflection], “It was a very interesting lab, and helpful even for those who are not going into health care, because they are on the receiving end of the care, and having more knowledge helps them advocate for themselves when needed.” Hannah perceived this lesson plan as a tool providing every student the ability to read the word and emboldening their agency to act differently in the world based on what they know (writing the world). She acknowledged that even for those learners enrolled in the class to fulfill prerequisites to transfer to a four-year institution to begin a program not related to health care, of which there are several, the laboratory was relevant.

The second class of this laboratory occurred the week after. During this session, using the gel electrophoresis technique, students analyzed a fraction of the sample generated in the first class to determine whether it had enough mtDNA to be detected and sequenced by the external laboratory where they were going to be sent. Additionally, they read an essay and watched two clips from the documentary “Race—The Power of an Illusion: The Difference between Us” (Pounder, Adelman, Cheng, Herbes-Sommers, Strain, Smith, and Ragazzi 2003). We engaged in a class discussion about the process of evolution, focusing on subspecies and speciation to explain why the common use of racial categories in humans does not have biological support. Reflecting on this segment of the laboratory, Jamal wrote:

“Race has always been a social and political concept that is set by governments. As an immigrant from the Middle East, I have seen racial biases about Pakistanis, Bengalis, and Indians in comparison to other nationalities and locals. Where I used to live, Saudi Arabia, more than half of the population are foreign immigrants from around the world. Where I am now [United States], is nothing but a country of immigrants. This alone proves that we keep moving around the world, that we can’t biologically become different subspecies/races” (online reflection 2019).

Jamal, using the lenses of his own experiences, attempted to debunk the myth of race as a biologically supported concept while simultaneously understanding its damaging effects as a social construct. Nevertheless, from a critical perspective, in his reflection, there are ideas about race and racism in the USA that need development and could benefit from additional historical context. As a recent migrant, he seemed to adopt the dominant idea of the USA as a country of immigrants without reflecting on the way this erases both Indigenous peoples and the descendants of enslaved Africans.

The third and final portion of the laboratory took place during the fourteenth week of the semester. It had been initially planned for the ninth week but was delayed because most students’ samples did not contain sufficient mtDNA to get complete readings. Since I could not use my students’ mtDNA sequences, I obtained public mtDNA sequences from students with different ancestries published on the “Sequence Server Website of Cold Spring Harbor’s Dolan DNA Learning Center” (Cold Spring Harbor’s Dolan DNA Learning Center 2019). Learners compared those mtDNA sequences to establish whether the differences supported the idea that different races are genetically distinct, and what they tell us about human origins and the concept of race. Next, they watched videos and read an essay and excerpts from peer-reviewed papers to prompt their consideration of biases in science and health care and reflection on actions they may take toward the dismantling of prejudice and racism in their respective fields.

Students were surprised about the lack of genetic difference between individuals of different races. They expressed frustration that these racial “categories” were still being used despite science proving that there is no genetic foundation for it. We discussed the consequences of this form of “classification,” as many of them called it, on people’s lives. Imran, for example, wrote, “All my life, I was taught there were different races in the world, but it was interesting to find out that there is actually little to no difference between the so-called ‘races’ at the genetic level. I also did not realize there were treatment outcome differences even when corrected for socioeconomic differences. It reminded me that science is never neutral; it contains the biases of the scientists, researchers, and practitioners engaged in it. I will now be a better professional!” (online reflection 2019).

Equally shocking for students were the systemic biases that medical students hold about people of color, particularly Black people, which ends in misdiagnoses, incorrect treatments, and an overall lack of empathy toward patients (Hoffman 2016). In her schoolwork, Monica reflected on this, “Research shows that minorities receive underwhelming health care and when they do receive care, they receive less than desirable options, such as amputation as opposed to rigorous courses of prevention aids or treatment” (schoolwork 2019).

The class discussions, reflections, papers, and videos seemed to reinforce their critical consciousness on this issue. Imran’s and Monica’s responses displayed the ability to read the world while showing surprise and disappointment in the differences in health care based on patients’ perceived racial classification. This reaction represented the class as a whole. They also exposed the capability to read the “biological” word by understanding the lack of genetic differences supporting the differential treatment. Fortunately, for many learners, like Imran, it was also a source of encouragement to become part of the healthcare field to fight against biases and racism (write the world). Whereas critical pedagogy often focuses on people’s ability to write the world through political action, Imran considers the ways in which people also write the world of professional practice.

Students reading and writing the biological world. Through their writings, in class, and in conversations with me, I observed students exhibiting the three components of critical consciousness. Freire (1993) saw the ability to read the world (human interest) as a preliminary step for reading the word (knowledge) or at least simultaneously occurring. The students’ comments, however, implied a difference in what it means to read and write the word and the world in biology and healthcare fields, as there was an interrelationship between meeting academic expectations and critical reflection on the origin and consequences of racism in science and health care. Consequently, for these learners to effectively reflect on this SJSI, reading the “biological” word must occur in conjunction with reading the world.

For instance, Peter, who demonstrated comfort (or sophisticated thinking) with important genetic concepts, stated in his schoolwork that “There is more [genetic] variation within the so-called races than between them. Additionally, there is no biologically definable genotype or phenotype that objectively determines a race. Lastly, the concept of race and racial categories and differences vary between cultures and countries” (schoolwork 2019). He not only understood that race is not genetically determined, but that there are discrepancies in how each race is perceived around the world. In contrast, Tatiana expressed that “All humans are the same, no matter the skin color or hair texture. Moreover, the borders between races are fading due to interracial marriages” (schoolwork 2019). Her first sentence oversimplifies the biology behind the issue by replacing it with a race evasive ideology, while the second implies genetic differences between races that will disappear with interracial marriages. At the end of the semester, when students were encouraged to compose learning reflections, Peter wrote, “The social realities of race can have biological effects on people. Those races considered ‘poor’ healthwise, like African Americans, really only have higher instances of disease due, in part, to racism and socioeconomic issues” (schoolwork 2019). Peter’s reading of the word allowed him to challenge false deficit notions of health disparities while acknowledging that both racism and socioeconomic issues play a role. Tatiana reflected that “People who live where there is not a well-developed health system tend to have more health problems” (schoolwork 2019). By doing so, she missed the nuanced and compounded effects of racism that lead to people being treated differently within the same system. Regarding critical consciousness’s last component, there were not enough discussions of students’ ability to “write the world” in their written and oral remarks, which suggests that this aspect of curriculum and my teaching need to be strengthened. I plan to include more opportunities and guidance in the laboratories, activities, and class discussions to explore and reflect on actions they could implement to address the SJSI at hand. Also, I have initiated conversations and collaborations with other science educators to increase opportunities for students to engage curriculum and transformative pedagogies that encourage them to reflect on and transform their realities.

Despite insightful critiques on Freire’s failure to deal with racial issues in meaningful ways, his framework served as a valuable instrument to examine students’ reflections about racism in science and healthcare careers. Identifying how and when students are “reading the world,” “reading the word,” and “writing the world” were vital tools in the process of developing and implementing an academically rigorous and transformative biology curriculum, particularly important for community college students. Throughout the semester, despite the difficulty in navigating this issue in a science class, students collectively worked to reach an understanding of the concept of race in biology and society. They expressed hope in themselves as scientists and healthcare practitioners to use science as a tool to fight racism in their fields. This is the kind of critical and hopeful learning that Freire envisioned and it is what students in our community colleges need and deserve, as I argue in the final section.

The radical potential of community colleges: a Freirean liberatory perspective

Regarding the status of community colleges, I continue to grapple with the role of institutions like mine. I have witnessed the potential that they hold to dramatically improve students’ lives by providing access to stable and rewarding careers. Yet, I see with trepidation the narrower and narrower scope of education that community colleges offer to students. For example, the number of general studies courses necessary to graduate has been reduced in several programs and the foreign language requirement has been eliminated in many two-year colleges. As a result, students stopped taking classes such as philosophy, Spanish, politics of Latin America, and others that contributed to expanding their horizons and repertoires while affirming their ways of communicating and living. There is a clear tension between community colleges as a pathway for marginalized students into traditional notions of success and the importance of education that aims to end marginalization.

Through the example of biology education that takes up SJSI, this paper argues for the promise of critical consciousness education and JCSP as means for dealing with this tension. For example, one of my students, who is a single mother from Nigeria, working as a nurse, and studying to become a medical doctor, asked during the class in which we discussed the biases of medical students, “And now what can I do with this information, how can I move forward?” (class discussion 2019). The whole class rallied together with ideas of actions she and they could implement not only at work, but at home, college, and community. While also debating the issues and reality of power dynamics in their place of work. “I want to improve things, but I still need to pay the bills,” one of my students said during this conversation (class discussion 2019).

These frameworks’ application in the preprofessional preparation of health sciences professionals is imperative, as it not only provides them with access to opportunities but also will make them better at their job through a critical lens of the systemic SJSI influencing their field. The tools and empowerment provided by these critical pedagogies and the SJSI curriculum to these learners do not have to wait for them to be implemented. The power of this work is that it relies on the radical potential of community colleges, institutions where students are already part of a system that needs to be transformed.

Simultaneously, I advocate for the place of critical consciousness principles beyond general science and health sciences education. Fortunately, Freire’s ideas have recently informed many educational researchers’ work, exploring how students integrate cognizance of structural disparity and oppression into their understanding of the conditions surrounding them and become empowered to transform them (Godfrey and Grayman 2014). Moreover, education for critical consciousness has been identified, by multiple scholars, as an effective approach to educating students of minoritized communities in USA schools (Morales-Doyle, Varelas, Segura and Bernal-Munera 2021). Since a classroom that prioritizes critical consciousness recognizes and nurtures students’ funds of knowledge and agency, it also supports them in becoming vehicles of transformation of their lives and their communities (Calabrese-Barton and Tan 2009).

Finally, I believe that to keep the promise of community colleges as organizations that provide opportunities for all, they must offer a transformative education. No method of delivering information could be called education as long as the student is seen as an object more than a subject with agency. Freire (2011) was certain that:

The traditional methods of education have nothing to do with liberatory education (that in fact, we should just call it education because if it is not liberatory, it is not education). These methods are instruments of domestication, not by omission or ignorance, but because they respond to the politics of our educational institutions. (p. 14)

Offering certificates, associate degrees, and transferring opportunities make community colleges extremely valuable. Still, if they are not paired with an education that enhances students’ agency to act over the struggles and injustices in their surroundings, they will not become institutions that provide a “second chance” as they claim to be.

Inspired by all that, I suggest a third option to the “second chance” or “social reproduction” perspectives guiding community colleges. A liberatory perspective considers how learning aligns with the role of education in society more broadly to elevate students' consciousness and empower them to transform their lives. In my context, as an educator in a community college that focuses on pathways in healthcare careers, I feel that it is urgent to adopt transformative pedagogies that emphasize teaching as a way to disrupt the historical role of schools as producers of social inequality. As institutions that primarily serve women, students of color, and low SES students, we should offer not only education at low cost for everyone that wants it, but also form future healthcare professionals to critically examine and reverse the current racist practices and assumptions of their field.