The origins of critical mentoring go back to the seminal work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire who first conceptualized the idea of critical consciousness as part of his efforts to promote literacy among the oppressed lower classes in his country. He felt that developing literacy was also essential to these rural communities being able to “read” the social context of oppression they experienced — that by developing their critical thinking and critical language skills they might be able to harness the power of their collective voices and fight back in meaningful ways against their marginalization and the oppressive structures of Brazilian society.

It did not take long for scholars and activists around the world to see the power in Freire’s ideas and to start developing programmatic experiences and interventions that could help other groups see the world around them in more accurate and complex ways so that they could take action to break out of their cycles of oppression.

In the Handbook of Youth Mentoring (2nd edition), David DuBois and Michael Karcher illustrate a conceptualization of youth mentoring that highlights five elements: activity, relationship, intervention, policy, and societal.

• Activity: the “social interactions” mentors have with young people.
• Relationship: “interpersonal ties” that prescribe the mentoring relationship as well as the “mentoring activity” that occurs.
• Intervention: “intentional efforts” on the part of the mentoring program or agency to promote mentoring activities targeting specific groups and communities.
• Policy: government’s providing meaningful support of mentoring in the form of “initiatives” and so on.
• Societal: the promotion of positive perceptions of youth mentoring, to make youth mentoring more accessible and more attractive.

Critical mentoring focuses on using essential components of critical theories, particularly critical race theory, to inform these essential components of mentoring. In doing so, it urges us to better understand that the problems facing marginalized and minoritized youth are rooted in pervasive, systemic, and institutional inequity. Beginning with a critical understanding of the context youth exist in and then applying critical theory to inform mentoring activities, critical mentoring is the next level of mentoring research and practice, catapulting the work into a realm of activism and resistance.

We know from considerable research on youth mentoring over the past three decades that mentors, both those provided through programs and those who youth form natural relationships with in everyday life, can have a profoundly positive impact on young people on just about every type of outcome imaginable — from academic achievement and career success to improved mental and physical health, reduced negative behaviors, and beyond (see Raposa and colleagues, 2019, for the most recent broad meta-analytic summary of the impact of programmatic mentoring). So, here we focus on the benefits to young people when they build their critical consciousness.

Beyond traditional mentoring contexts, there is a robust body of research demonstrating that both youth development programs and educational institutions can do work with young people that builds their critical reflection, their sense of group identity, their political self-efficacy, and their undertaking of critical action (see Heberle and colleagues’ recent literature review for a deep discussion of relevant studies). This research suggests that key adults in the lives of young people, including mentors from outside the family unit, can play a vital role in helping youth build critical consciousness and facilitate the crucial steps of turning that consciousness into empowering action and engagement with the community. Research strongly suggests that development of critical consciousness mediates growth as an individual and a wealth of benefits in other aspects of a young person’s life.