Contextual Background
In the final year of BA Illustration at Camberwell the Unit 9 project takes the form of a Critical Practice Project for which students can present their project in one of the following outcomes: Visual, Performative, Written or Audio. This provides a challenge as teaching methods need to support students development of criticality through a wide-range of approaches to the brief. Students also need to demonstrate in-depth research through a critical lens to support their outcomes that encompasses a diversity of approaches.
Evaluation
Current strategies that support a broad-range of approaches to the Unit 9 Critical Practice Project include:
- A choice of 4 Critical Practice tutor-led workshops from a menu of varied themed workshops. Students bring their individual Unit 9 topic to the workshop to develop both a conceptual and critical approach through practical tasks.
The limitations of this approach include: students signing up to either too many or too few workshops, overwhelming choice leaving students feeling confused about their critical direction and students unable to apply criticality to their subject area. - 4 Mandatory online Critical practice talks that unpack criticality through guest speakers and visual tasks. Some students benefit from online working whilst others do not engage as fully. Often follow up tasks from these sessions are not completed and students do not grasp how to be critical thinkers.
The biggest challenge of this Unit is teaching a diverse cohort what criticality is and how to apply it to their thinking, learning and practical development.
Moving forwards
‘The heartbeat of critical thinking is the longing to know – to understand how life works’ (Hooks, 2010, ch.1, p.7)
I have taken inspiration from Bel Hooks Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom and her suggestion of Engaged Pedagogy. When students arrive at this Unit, many are unaware of how to apply criticality to their work. ‘Students do not become critical thinkers overnight’ (Hooks, 2010, ch.1, p.8). Although there are critical practice projects in all three years of the BA illustration course, many students have a sense of fear or resistance to developing their work critically. Hook’s Engaged Pedagogy demonstrated how this approach ‘aims to restore students’ will to think’ (Hooks, 2010, ch.1, p.8) and a strategy I would like to take forward in my own practice. She outlines that through this that teachers ‘must be willing to acknowledge what we do not know’ and that teachers should show by example that ‘the shape of knowledge is constantly changing’ (Hooks, 2010, ch.1, p. 10). I want to reflect this idea with an introductory session in which tutors emphasise the importance of openness whilst demonstrating how to explore multiple viewpoints on a subject.
This could be introduced to 2nd years, so that students are gradually introduced to critical thinking as the course progresses.
An optional seminar series this year encouraged forms of critical thinking amongst students who felt confident in sharing their ideas, whereas attendance was low from quieter students. I would like to find strategies to create a more inclusive and safe space for these students to encourage this way of thinking.
Moving forwards, I have reflected on Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach? in which he puts forward the idea that ‘teaching students to think critically probably lies in small part in showing them new ways of thinking’ and essentially that critical thinking may not be a skill (Willingham, 2008, p.24) Critical practice workshops could be developed to directly address the development of critical thinking in new and original ways, whilst also being accessible or appealing to students with a more passive approach to their learning.