Ways of seeing through desk critique: intertextuality as a pedagogical tool for learning opportunities

Abstract

ABSTRACT The critique, central to teaching and learning in fine arts studios, allows expert teachers to apprentice novice art students into their professional community, through feedback and guidance. This article examines ways teachers’ discursive practices during desk critiques, in particular, socially construct opportunities for students to learn what fine artists see and do, and how to adopt these professional literacies themselves. Positioning intertextuality as analytical tool (Bloome, D., and A. Egan-Robertson. 1993. “The Social Construction of Intertextuality in Classroom Reading and Writing Lessons.” Reading Research Quarterly 28: 305–333), we apply micro-ethnographic discourse analysis (Bloome et al. 2005) to a six-minute desk critique between an instructor and student in a college fine arts studio, augmented with data from individual follow-up interviews. The analysis focuses on how diverse semiotic resources (e.g. words, objects, images, and gestures) can establish intertextual linkages, allowing teachers to connect disciplinary content, conceptual understandings, and practical application through intertextual dialogues with students. The desk critique offers promise as a potential successful and adaptable transdisciplinary pedagogical tool.