(Re) imagining critical thinking through the visual

Abstract

In this thesis I explore critical thinking through the visual as a means to confront issues of equity. This exploration is underpinned by an appraisal of the current impact of the ‘visual’ on how we relate to the world and a critique of education as a site that privileges efficiency and individual success, both notions that undermine criticality. A problem with the power of the visual lies in the fact that it is often used to portray dominant views or a consumer culture in persuasive ways, thus increasing its potential to influence thinking. I argue that there is a need to embody a critical approach towards our everyday visual experiences, yet the primary emphasis on students’ ‘efficient performance’ does not support them sufficiently to develop a reflective stance. I believe that visual arts education offers a vital arena for supporting students’ critical thinking through the visual by enabling them to develop a critical voice, increased awareness and potential social involvement. I contend that the reflective and disruptive potential of visual arts education is hindered by prominent discourses of efficiency. Adopting a postmodern position I interrogate how critical thinking is understood and enacted in the context of conflicting principles of performativity and equity in visual arts education in New Zealand. My position is founded in the notion that it is equally important for young people to be critical in order to participate in their communities in ways that transform society towards more equitable ends. As an artist and visual arts teacher coming from Chile, a country whose educational system continues to strive to restore ideals of equity lost during the dictatorship from 1973-1990, New Zealand’s bicultural and increasingly multicultural context appeared to offer an alternative vantage point from which to explore critical thinking. This led me to explore through visual and written means the possibilities of critical thinking in three secondary schools in Auckland, New Zealand - a girls’, a boys’ and a co-educational school - in the context of visual arts education from years 9-13. My analysis comprises examining whether discourses of efficiency and equity have influenced the orientation of critical thinking in national policies, the schools’ philosophies and art department schemes. It involves an examination of whether and how the visual arts teachers’ understandings and approaches encourage critical thinking as a transformative dimension and whether the students embody this dimension through their stories and art making. The aim of this thesis is to offer a critical discussion and problematize different points of view about critical thinking by (re) imagining these understandings through the visual.