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Lessons From Art and Design Education: The Role of In-Process Critique in the Creative Inquiry Process

Tracie Costantino Rhode Island School of Design

This article describes how a minimally discussed component of a rigorous art and design education, the in-process critique, may be adapted as a core feature in creative learning across disciplines. The author shares examples from art and design education practice and connects a specific approach, the critical friends protocol, to research findings on maximizing the positive effects of feedback on learning. A model for creative inquiry with the in-process critique as a significant phase in this iterative process is presented.

Keywords: critique, formative assessment, creative inquiry, art and design education

As a teacher educator coming from the discipline of aesthetic education, I have felt both fortunate and marginalized. Fortunate because the art educator, especially in K–12 public schools, typi- cally is given greater curricular freedom because art is not a mandatory subject for standardized testing. However, this may also lead to marginalization and the well-known lament of shrink- ing instructional time dedicated to arts education or a complete lack of provision for the arts (see, e.g., Center on Education Policy, 2008). This is a persistent concern, despite calls for increased attention to developing students’ creative thinking through arts education (President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, 2011). To upend this scenario, I often encourage my preservice art education students to seize this seeming conundrum by approach- ing curriculum design as a creative act. Sharing my praxis in this regard, I present in this article how a minimally discussed com- ponent of a rigorous art and design education, the in-process critique, may be adapted to a core feature in creative learning, which is creative problem solving (e.g., Treffinger, Isaksen, & Stead-Dorval, 2006).

Creative Problems in Art and Design Education

A quality art and design education, whether at the primary, secondary or postsecondary levels, may be described as problem- based, in that students are often presented visual problems to solve. For example, a teacher might ask students seated around a still life, “how would you represent the presence of objects located in your peripheral vision in relation to those you can directly see?” This could be categorized as an open-ended problem with a myriad of possible solutions, especially considering students’ differing points of view in relation to how the still life is positioned in the room. It would engage several creative thinking skills, such as

observation, transformation, and imaging or visualization (Root- Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 1999). A creative resolution to this problem would be an unexpected or unique approach that stands out as insightful or compelling among the majority of drawings from the class.

However this is not the kind of problem I hope to encourage in this article. Although art and design education is valued for its ability to develop productive habits of mind such as a tolerance for ambiguity, analogic thinking, or a resistance to closure (Eisner, 2002), I am interested in exploring how real-world, ill-structured problems are also productively investigated through arts-based inquiry that includes the in-process critique as an iterative phase in the process.

As a colleague in the fine arts recently asserted while discussing the nature of research in the visual arts, artists are not so much interested in solving problems as in finding them. Problem finding, and framing, is an essential component in the problem-solving process, one that is often rushed or overlooked (Gause & Wein- berg, 1990). In problem-based learning (PBL), a critical stage is identifying the central problem(s) when given an ill-structured, open-ended problem (see Costantino, 2002 for an application of PBL to aesthetic education). The central problem may vary de- pending on different stakeholder perspectives.

A regular assignment I have given in a course preparing teachers for secondary art education was for students to engage in PBL in their roles as art teachers, as authenticity and real-world scenarios in professional contexts are defining aspects of the PBL approach (Torp & Sage, 1998). Here is an example:

You have been asked to mount an exhibition of student artwork from a local school at an exhibition space in the university’s School of Art during an annual arts festival open house. There will be members of the school, university, and wider community attending the event, so you want to make sure it is a great success.

As a first step in the process, the preservice art teachers need to identify the relevant stakeholders, and the central problems

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Tracie Costantino, Academic Affairs, Rhode Island School of Design, 2 College Street, Providence, RI 02903. E-mail: [email protected]

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Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts © 2015 American Psychological Association 2015, Vol. 9, No. 2, 118 –121 1931-3896/15/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/aca0000013

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from those varied perspectives. Identifying the central problem is probably the most challenging aspect of this activity, as the students often think the problem is obvious—mounting the exhibition. Once they assume a specific stakeholder’s perspec- tive and work in heterogeneous groups of stakeholders, they realize how complex the situation may become with competing priorities. For example, from the public school principal’s per- spective, the main problem may be how to transport students and their families to the university. For the director of the university’s School of Art, it may be how to ensure that families understand that there may be works of art with challenging content on exhibit in other areas of the school—a central problem being safeguarding freedom of expression in relation to public school district restrictions and criteria for appropriate field trips. Creative thinking comes in as the preservice teachers negotiate these priorities, brainstorm the relevant issues or questions to address, and importantly, research these issues and develop possible strategies to apply to their resolution.

Other examples of real-world problems ripe for inquiry through the arts come from a multi-year research study on a college-level interdisciplinary curriculum integrating art and engineering through the Synthesis and Design Studio. The primary objective of the studio as it has been implemented on two occasions was for students to develop an understanding of how to analyze, frame, and model problems within a complex, real-world context, utilizing diverse perspectives and ways of thinking. To meet this objective, the first studio focused on observing, abstracting, and modeling energy use within com- plex sociotechnical systems (see Kellam, Walther, Costantino, & Cramond, 2013 for elaboration on the curricular design of the studio). The second iteration asked environmental engineering, landscape architecture, and art education students co-enrolled in the course to develop a community awareness initiative around water conservation (Guyotte, Sochacka, Costantino, Walther, & Kellam, 2014).1

At the Rhode Island School of Design, outside organizations spon- sor studio courses to investigate a problem relevant for their industry. A recent example was the Shape of Flight and Feeling of Flight experimental design labs funded by Cessna, in which students inves- tigated the nature of flight and developed theoretical scenarios to inform future commercial aircraft designs (for more information see http://www.risd.edu/about/news/2014/the-feeling-of-flight/).

In all of these examples, students employed multimodal inquiry through material exploration— drawing, three-dimensional model- ing with varied materials (clay, fabric, wire, etc.), computer mod- eling with AutoCad—as well as interviewing stakeholders, read- ing, writing, and mathematical estimation to frame and model problems with real significance. For these reasons—the need for problem finding and framing and sustained inquiry into the rele- vant issues and potential strategies—I prefer to use the phrase creative inquiry process, instead of creative problem solving. It is in the finding, framing, and multimodal inquiry where creative thinking is especially engaged. In this process, progress check-ins foster the cognitive coaching or facilitation of creative thinking that is central to problem-based learning (Torp & Sage, 1998). In art and design education, the critique often plays this role, espe- cially when used formatively through in-process critique.

Critique

In their study examining the nature of high-quality secondary art education instruction, Hetland, Winner, Veenema, and Sheridan (2013) identified the critique as one of four primary learning struc- tures (the others are demonstration–lecture, students-at-work, and exhibition). This is certainly the case in postsecondary art and design education, which has been a prevailing influence on K–12 art educa- tion curriculum models. As a central feature of postsecondary art and design education, the critique is its signature pedagogy, which is what Schulman defined as “characteristic forms of teaching and learning” in a profession (Schulman, 2005, p. 52).

Critiques may be whole group—with artworks displayed along a critique wall— or conducted one-on-one between the student and instructor (also called desk crits). Often the critique serves as a summative assessment at the end of a project or course and resembles a formal presentation in which the artist shares his or her intent and process. When a critique is done well, an instructor uses various strategies to help the student identify areas of weakness and strength in their work and offers suggestions for improvement in a constructive and supportive tone. The instructor might employ the Socratic method, asking a series of questions to help the student articulate his or her intent. The instructor might engage classroom peers as critique partners or use writing activities, including Post-it notes placed on a critique wall (e.g., see Barrett, 1997). These strategies may differ from what many contemporary artists might have experienced in their college or graduate school experience in which the critique was at times a less than constructive, supportive, or positive experience. Consequently, there have been efforts to demystify and prepare post- secondary students for the critique experience (Buster & Crawford, 2010; Elkins, 2012), as well as describe why the critique is a critical pedagogical component of the studio classroom (e.g., Budge et al., 2013; Sutton, 2013).

In-Process Critique

The critique can be an especially powerful learning tool when it is used formatively in the midst of a project, instead of occurring at a project’s conclusion. I first started using in-process critique several years ago as a learning structure outside of the art classroom when I taught a writing workshop for graduate students and adapted the critical friends approach (Costantino, 2010). Critical friends is a protocol for giving feedback in a professional learning community and was originally developed for K–12 teachers to support construc- tive dialogue about, for example, student work, curriculum, or teach- ing methods. The protocol consists of the following six steps:

1. Overview in which the facilitator describes the focus of the session.

2. Presentation of the artifact, observation, or issue by the presenter (who is different from the facilitator) in which

1 Partial support for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation’s Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) program under Award 0837173, and Engineering Education and Centers (EEC) program under Award 1160350, and the University of Georgia’s Office of STEM Education. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the University of Georgia.

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119LESSONS FROM ART AND DESIGN EDUCATION

the presenter explains what is to be “tuned” to the ques- tions or concerns that should focus the feedback.

3. Opportunity for participants to ask the presenter clarify- ing questions.

4. Discussion of the artifact or issue during which the pre- senter remains silent, listening, and taking notes.

5. Presenter reflects on the feedback.

6. Facilitator debriefs the session.

Participants are directed to give positive or “warm” feedback and constructively critical or “cool” feedback that is focused on the tuning question(s). It is also important that the participants give practical and actionable suggestions to accompany their feedback (for more information, visit the National School Reform Faculty Web site at http://www.nsrfharmony.org/faq.html#1).

Adapting this protocol for in-process critique is relevant to any discipline. Essential and easily adopted elements are the use of tuning questions and clarifying questions to focus feedback, while the presenter remains silent so that he or she may attend fully to the feedback and then respond with considered reflection. Graduate students who have participated in this process have found remain- ing silent during the discussion to be the most challenging but important component of the process, as they are able to benefit from the exchange of ideas that occur during the group discussion through active listening (Costantino, 2010).

The critical friends protocol aligns with research findings on how to maximize the positive effects of feedback. Feedback tends to generate positive learning when it is focused on the task (or artifact) as opposed to the person, the student has a clear goal, there are low threats to self-esteem, and the feedback includes specific suggestions for improvement (Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Kluger & DeNisi, 1996).

Related to the research on feedback, there is a growing body of research on the influence of critique, and especially peer critique, on creativity in art and design education (e.g., Budge, Neale, & Lynas, 2013; Dannels, Housley Gaffney, & Norris Martin, 2011; Gray, 2013; Percy, 2004; Schrand & Eliason, 2012). For example, Budge, Beale, and Lynas (2013) empha- sized the importance of taking group dynamics into account when structuring learning activities that will include peer cri- tique. Gray (2013) studied the influence of informal peer cri- tique that happens outside of the classroom on students’ devel- oping understanding of practices in their professional field. Percy (2004) cautions against assuming that critique inherently fosters critical reflection; instead summative critiques may be merely descriptive and therefore less effective for students’ development as creative designers. More research is needed to investigate the potential of the in-process critique specifically as a formative tool in students’ creative learning.

Concluding Thoughts on a Future Direction

Figure 1 illustrates the cycle for the creative inquiry process as I have described it in this article. Situated within a framework of creative learning—the intersection of creative teaching and stu- dents’ creative agency (Jeffrey, 2006)—this model may be applied

at K–12 and postsecondary levels. It forms a robust model that is iterative, with in-process critique occurring at multiple points in the inquiry process and guided by tuning questions, recurring multimodal exploration and presentation of ideas, careful listening, and multigenerational (peer and instructor) feedback.

This model emerged in praxis and is grounded in the practice- based research cited in this article. Meta-analyses on feedback and learning suggest that the in-process critique is an integral feature of the creative inquiry process. How the in-process critique may be a form of dialogic inquiry and how it interfaces with material ex- ploration in multimodal inquiry are potent topics for future re- search.

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Figure 1. Creative inquiry process.

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Received February 16, 2015 Accepted February 18, 2015 �

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