Models of Critical Discourse and Classroom Instruction: A Critical Examination

Abstract

Art criticism can be understood as a form of studied discourse, as a mode of inquiry, and as a discipline or field of inquiry (Wolff & Geahigan, 1997). Although all of these concepts are relevant to the design of curriculum and instruction, educational theorists for the most part have focused their attention on critical discourse in devising models of criticism for the schools. Such models typically present a series of activities, linked to the performance of different types of statements. The model proposed by Feldman (1967, 1970) is typical of many in the literature. In his model criticism is broken down into a number of discrete steps or stages which students proceed through in a linear fashion. Students criticize by first describing, then analyzing, interpreting, and finally evaluating works of The pervasiveness of these models have led many practitioners and classroom teachers to equate criticism with 11 talk, spoken or written about art. The widespread acceptance of such models as representations of what art criticism is and should be raises a number of questions which even at this late date have yet to be adequately answered. \What are critical statements? How are critical statements individuated from one another? How adequately do such models reflect actual critical discourse? And how are such models to be translated into classroom instruction? In this article, I consider each of these questions in turn. In doing so I argue that current models present a distorted picture of the discourse of critics and if followed, lead to a problematic method of instruction: namely, classroom recitation. After discussing the problems inherent in such a method, I suggest that critical inquiry, rather than critical discourse, is a more fruitful concept for structuring classroom instruction. I conclude by proposing a model of instruction to promote critical inquiry in the classroom. The Emergence of Art Criticism in American Art Education Interest in art criticism arose with the general curriculum reform movement of the 1950s and '60s where it was seen as a promising approach for bringing about an understanding and appreciation of art, learnings that had been widely neglected during the preceding Progressivist era (Barkan, 1962; Munro, 1956). Theorists interested in criticism, however, had only vague ideas about how this new subject should be conceptualized. During the decades which followed, they sought to arrive at an understanding of the nature of criticism in different ways. One way was to ask professional critics to reflect upon their own practice. They also examined critical writings directly or generalized from their own familiarity with critical practice. By far the most important way of conceptualizing art criticism, however, was through an appeal to philosophical aesthetics. That philosophical aesthetics should be seen as a source of information about art criticism may seem initially surprising. But in the period between the two World Wars, aesthetics, following a general trend in Anglo-American philosophy, turned away from philosophical speculation and metaphysical system building toward a view of itself as a meta-discipline. Reflecting the turn in philosophy during this period, aestheticians attempted to explicate the concept of criticism by focusing on the language used by critics. Although it is sometimes difficult to precisely identify the sources individual theorists used in formulating their models of criticism, it is likely that most relied upon such works as Monroe Beardsley's Aesthetics (1958), Harold Osborne's Aesthetics and Criticism (1955), Jerome Stolnitz's Aesthetics and the Philosophy ofArt Criticism (1960), and Morris Weitz's Hamlet and the Philosophy of Literary Criticism (1964), all influential studies in the philosophy of criticism during the immediate postwar period. Although there are differences among these studies, each explicates the concept of criticism in terms of a small number of basic linguistic functions, tasks, or activities held to be intrinsic to the discipline of criticism. …