At the end of the day how you can start integrating critical pedagogy into your classroom is going to be up to you. Maybe your school gives you plenty of time, resources, and freedom, and you can do a full overhaul, that’s great! But there’s a good chance you’re struggling with budgets, lack of planning time, and unrealistic expectations as is and that’s okay too. Maybe you’re already utilizing a lot of critical pedagogy in your class and you don’t need to change much, or maybe everything I’ve discussed is completely different from how you’ve been teaching but you like how it sounds and want to start small. Regardless of your situation, everyone can bring critical pedagogy into their classroom to some extent, and you can adapt to whatever your resources allow and your students need.
One of the simplest ways to make sure you have a critical classroom is to encourage talking. You want your students to be comfortable expressing their opinions, asking questions, and raising challenges, and just as important is you have to make sure you listen. Don’t be afraid of admitting you’re wrong or saying “I don’t know” if a student challenges you, make it a collaborative process where you’re learning together and from each other.
Encourage making mistakes. The saying “you have to make a lot of bad art to make good art” always drove me crazy as an artist, but it’s true and it’s even more important to know as a teacher. You are there to teach the techniques and skills students need to make art, but they’re only really going to figure out how to apply them, what works for them, and even invent new ones, if they aren’t afraid of making bad art. If a student wants to experiment with an idea or technique outside what they’re “supposed” to be doing encourage them to do it and see what happens. If it’s good, that’s great! But more importantly, if it’s bad make sure you don’t hit them with a “well maybe you should do it my way next time” because that’s the fast track to students who are afraid to think independently. Instead, praise them for trying something new and learning from it. It will make them more confident and creative artists, and it will also make them more fearless and independent thinkers outside the art room.
When it gets to projects, that’s where it’s going to get really individualized to your class, but I have some tips. Before I said that results-based projects aren’t good because they take all the problem solving and creative decisions away from the student, that’s often true, but sometimes they serve a purpose and there are more options than getting rid of them altogether if that’s not realistic for your class. Let’s start with a story that’s an example of what not to do:
A girl in art class was doing the classic assignment on perspective, drawing buildings and windows. When she finished she started experimenting with different shaped windows in perspective. When the teacher saw she told her that wasn’t part of the assignment, it was too advanced and she had to erase them. When the girl refused the teacher gave her a D on the assignment.
We already talked about not punishing students for experimenting, but this is also a great example of how experimentation and creativity can be done even in a cookie-cutter style project. Having a results-based project to learn a specific skill like perspective can be helpful, it allows you and the students to focus on learning that technique. But there’s always going to be room to push the boundaries of the project, and that’s what you want to see. Encourage students to experiment with other shapes once they get perspective, or let them be creative with color if the technique is form. Students are individuals, given the freedom they will all do things differently so even if you’re using the same project encourage them to push the boundaries of it.
There’s also plenty of ways to have everyone do the same project without dictating the results. Pick projects where each student is basing their work off something they’re interested in, even if they’re all taking their subject and doing the same thing with it. If you’re stuck having everyone do the same thing, especially with young students who need a lot of prep work that can’t be individualized, do the same thing as with the technique projects and find the space to be unique. Encourage them to color the background into space or underwater, or use opposite colors, wherever they can experiment, encourage them to.. They’ll create their own problems to solve.
Finally, the most important thing you can prioritize in your classroom to create critical thinkers and independent learners is a safe and kind classroom environment. Nancy Lampert did another study on “Inquiry and Critical Thinking in an Elementary Art Program ” where she
was able to measure improvement on a critical thinking test as well as observable improvement in the students’ comfort with discussion, problem-solving, and self-expression. Inquiry-based art, encouraging exploration and experimentation, and discussion and critique, were key components of this but Lampert concludes that none of that would have been possible without a focus on kindness saying “by modeling tolerance and respect for the students… perhaps that resulted in a safe place where the children could grow artistically, cognitively, and socially”. One of the benefits of critical thinking is being more open and understanding of others, but it’s also necessary to develop it in the first place. To have a critical thinking classroom students have to be vulnerable. They have to feel comfortable talking freely, asking questions without worrying about being wrong, and express themselves creatively without fearing judgment. It’s easy enough to ask for discussion and to set up the curriculum to facilitate it, but if students aren’t comfortable messing up and sharing then it’s useless. If the teacher has not shown their students respect, earning it in return, involving the students in their own learning will be impossible. Creating a safe and kind classroom is then perhaps the most critical foundation of a Critical Art Education and anyone can make their class a safer and kinder place for students.