This qualitative social work case study examined the relationships between internationalized pedagogy and developing critical consciousness in undergraduate students. Participants included social work students from the United States and Germany who participated in an intercultural dialogic exchange. This exchange focused on social welfare policies in students‘ respective nations, and was facilitated by classroom-to-classroom Internet-based video-conferencing. Data collection included recording the intercultural dialogue, interviewing participants from the United States and Germany, collecting communication between the researcher and participants, and noting observations. Data analysis featured NVivo-based coding, counting, and thematic interpretation of the intercultural dialogue, participant interviews and researcher-participant communication.

Participant critical consciousness was operationalized and measured using principal traits from Freire‘s (1974, 1998) work on critical consciousness development. Findings suggested: (a) evidence of movement toward critical consciousness in both groups of participants, and (b) nine factors that appeared to move participants along the critical consciousness continuum. These factors suggest that critical consciousness is influenced by individual attributes, group characteristics and pedagogical decisions. These findings are shared in support of the goal to develop critical consciousness in social work students within the current context of internationalizing higher education.