ETA_4.

3_03_art_Duncum 2/4/09 11:09 AM Page 247

International Journal of Education through Art Volume 4 Number 3

Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/eta.4.3.247/1 © Intellect Ltd 2008

Thinking critically about critical thinking:

towards a post-critical, dialogic pedagogy
for popular visual culture
Paul Duncum University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, USA

Abstract Keywords
The influence of critical theory in art education has become commonplace, but its popular culture
use in addressing students’ popular culture in kindergarten to Year 12 classrooms is post-critical
problematic. The now numerous reports by art teachers of their successfully incul- dialogic
cating critical consciousness towards popular visual culture appears to have more pedagogy
to do with a reforming zeal or advocacy than evidence. Moreover, in echoing the media education
modernist origins of critical theory, their attempts to facilitate critical thinking
often take the form of unproblematic and authoritarian pedagogy. Lessons learned
from media education in the United Kingdom are employed to recommend that
art teachers reject prima facie evidence of critical thinking among their students
and learn to appreciate the complexity of student negotiations with popular cul-
ture. Taking their cue from media educators, it is proposed that art educators
adopt a post-critical pedagogy based on Bhaktin’s notions of dialogue.

(Imagine a teacher holding up two images before a class, one by Picasso, the 1. I did not always think
other an advertisement for jeans. Both images involve a man and a woman.) so and I am as guilty
as anyone in art edu-
cation of previously
Teacher: See how in both images the man is looking at the woman advocating critical
and the woman is looking out at us. The woman appears pedagogy. See
Duncum 1989 and
to rely for approval on the viewer, who is presumably a 2005.
male.
Girl Student: What’s the point?
Teacher: Well, it’s sexist isn’t it?
Girl Student: Oh yeah, girls know all about that!
Teacher: Yes, I’m sure. Now we’re going to talk back to sexism by
creating pictures that show men and women as equal.

(Some of the boys giggle, some nod in agreement, while some of the girls roll
their eyes, some smile, and some give nothing away.)
This well-meaning teacher is evidently intent on transforming the con-
sciousness of students, empowering both the boys and the girls to think
critically about gender roles as part of an agenda to develop a more just,
equitable and democratic society. The goals are laudable, but through my
own teaching and a review of media education research I have come to
believe that the means are deeply flawed.1 I contend in this paper that criti-
cal thinking is necessary to deal with the struggles over values and beliefs

ETA 4 (3) pp. 247–257 © Intellect Ltd 2008 247

ETA_4.3_03_art_Duncum 2/4/09 11:09 AM Page 248

played out everyday in and through visual imagery, but alone it is seriously
deficient. The development of critical thinking must be approached through
a dialogical pedagogy, what British media educators variously call a ‘playful
form of pedagogy’ (Buckingham 2003: 58) ‘or post-critical pedagogy’
(Green 1998: 180). Kindergarten to Year 12 (K–12) media teachers in Britain,
who have long and deep experience of teaching popular culture, have found
that critical theory translated directly into a critical pedagogy without the
leavening of dialogue simply does not work. While it is often the case in
education that there is little reliable evidence of success, in this case a sub-
stantial body of evidence exists showing that while critical pedagogy in
schools secures an A grade for effort it only secures an F grade for achieve-
ment (e.g., Buckingham et al. 2005). Media educators warn that developing
a critical consciousness in school students should be viewed more as a
long-term goal than an expectation. It is naive for teachers to expect stu-
dents to adopt a critical consciousness simply because they promote it.
This is notably the case when dealing with students’ preferred popular
imagery, which many art educators now advocate, because students, deeply
invested in their own preferences, resist teacher intervention, and because
teachers often miss the subtleties of student understandings.

Critical theory and critical pedagogy

For a largely older generation of art educators – those few who addressed
popular culture at all – popular culture was considered debased and
responsible for undermining civilized society (e.g., Feldman 1982; Smith
1981; McFee 1961). While this view may still be active among some art
educators today, among a younger generation of art educators – children
of a postmodern, image-saturated society – the tendency is rather to
concentrate on the way popular culture is riddled with ideologies that
help to maintain social inequality. In either case, lessons about popular
visual culture often seem to be less about popular culture and more a
means for teaching moral and political lessons: popular culture is under-
stood to be dangerous, and something from which gullible students
need to be rescued.
Critical pedagogy draws upon a well-developed body of critical theory
with origins in Biblical exegesis, Hegel, Weber and Marx (Honderich 1995).
Critical theory assumes that all ideas, concepts and theories, including its
own, are determined by historical as well as contemporary pressures and
processes and are not simply in the nature of things. Nothing is taken as
value free, and widely accepted common-sense ‘givens’ least of all.
Moreover, in a hierarchically structured society that is inherently oppressive
of some segments, the dominant intellectual production – including art
and popular culture – embodies the ideological frameworks of the domi-
nant social forces. Dominant production is employed to further dominant
interests, not only through propagation but also through marginalizing and
appropriating opposition. This said, societies are understood to be suffi-
ciently dynamic always to engender counter positions – critical theory itself
being a prime example. In resisting dominant positions and offering alter-
native readings of reality, critical theory claims to liberate people from the
oppression of dominant mindsets. Critical theory aims – to use two of its
key terms – at empowerment and transformation.

248 Paul Duncum

ETA_4.3_03_art_Duncum 2/4/09 11:09 AM Page 249

However, the examination of popular culture in such critical terms is 2. See Duncum 2007 for
highly problematic in school classrooms. While it is relatively easy to be an extensive review of
K–12 art teachers
critical of cultural forms with which one has little personal experience or dealing with popular
engagement (as is the case with fine and contemporary art for most stu- culture in their class-
dents), it is another matter with the popular culture in which students are rooms over the past
few years.
daily immersed and with which they share powerful, affective associations.
Critiquing popular culture means asking students to critique themselves, 3. Rare exceptions
include comments by
which is difficult even for mature adults. Lee (2007), Chung
Nevertheless, whether relying upon student discussion or student art- (2006), Polaniecki
work as evidence, many art teachers have claimed their recent efforts in (2006), Briggs (2007)
and Cummings
introducing critical thinking about popular culture are successful. Many (2007) that some of
cultural sites have been critiqued in art lessons, for example, advertising their students showed
(Ahn 2007), tourist attractions (Ballangee-Morris 2002), reality TV shows marked disinterest in
thinking critically.
(Polaniecki 2006), Disney animated movies (Tavin and Anderson 2003),
music videos (Taylor 2000), computer games (Lee 2007) and even images
of children among pre-schoolers (Trafi 2006). The issues examined are
equally diverse, including – and again these are only examples – celebrity
(Briggs 2007), product placement, family life (Polaniecki 2006), violence
(Chung 2006; Lee 2007), racism (Tavin and Anderson 2003), gender
(Kharod 2006), alcoholism, pollution (Ahn 2007), beauty, anorexia, bully-
ing, divorce (Plummer-Rohloff 2006), drugs, drunkenness and credit card
abuse (Higgins 2007).2 Typically, teachers attempt to demonstrate the dis-
tance between visual representations, which often take the form of stereo-
types, and students’ lived experience. Alternatively, they propose that
visual representations of others are often as inadequate as visual repre-
sentations are frequently of them. While the goals are praiseworthy, signif-
icant problems exist.

Critical thinking about critical theory and pedagogy

However well meaning the numerous accounts of applying critical theory in
art lessons are, it is frequently impossible to determine how they define crit-
ical thinking. With only a few exceptions, the art education literature regards
critical pedagogy as unproblematic.3 It often seems to mean no more than
students were taught something, where teaching is conflated with learning
and even with inculcation of habitual thought. It is as though art teachers
expect students simply to learn what they teach. However, evidence that
this actually happens is scant, and the distance between teaching and
transformation is great. Instead of transformation and empowerment, there
appears to be a tendency to romanticize students’ critical thinking and view
it as sophisticated.
Teachers have been too willing to accept prima facie evidence that learn-
ing has taken place and curriculum goals have been met. Defining critical
awareness as understanding ‘contemporary social problems at a personal
level’, art educator Jae Young Lee (2007) draws upon his own classroom
experience of teaching popular visual culture to suggest that teachers are
often happy to accept as evidence of success signs that students offer up
merely to placate them. Lee’s point is made ad infinitum by media educa-
tors (e.g., Burn and Durran 2006; Turnbull 1998). David Buckingham et al.
found that students were quite prepared to ‘play along’ with their teacher’s
critical approach, but mostly this consisted of ‘guessing what was in the

Thinking critically about critical thinking 249

ETA_4.3_03_art_Duncum 2/25/09 11:41 AM Page 250

teacher’s mind’ (Buckingham et al. 2005: 43). Chris Richards (1998) adds
that students sometimes acquiesce or concede to being taught ‘on condi-
tion’ that it does not undermine their understanding of themselves
(Richards 1998: 136). It seems likely that claims that students engage in
critical thinking often have more to do with advocacy and/or teacher gulli-
bility than real evidence.
Moreover, while critical pedagogy aspires to be liberating, it is mostly
advanced at a theoretical level. Media teacher Judith Williamson (1985)
complains that academics fired up with reformer’s zeal have little knowl-
edge of the difficulties of working with real kids in actual classrooms.
Where critical theory has been practised it has often been ‘delivered, ironi-
cally, via authoritarian means’ (Gaudelius 2000: 25). Neil Brown (2003)
muses on critical pedagogy as perhaps ‘little more than a form of top-down
moralizing, propagating elite middle class values’ (Brown 2003: 289).
Proponents of critical pedagogy often seem to be guilty of failing to practise
the democratic, liberating gospel they preach, rightly seeing their objects of
criticism as oppressive, but ignoring their own position of authority in the
classroom and its potential for abuse (Turnbull 1998; Green 1998).
According to art educator Rebecca Herrmann (2005), some teachers’
personal accounts of how they deal with popular visual culture from a criti-
cal perspective show they use their authority in the classroom to direct stu-
dent projects to achieve predetermined solutions. In one example, an
assignment began by discussing photographs of clothing and what mean-
ings could be decoded. What followed, however, was entirely teacher
directed. Students were given photocopied bodies, markers and faces from
magazines, and told to make collages of clothed people. Thus the potential
moment in which students could have exercised their critical capacities was
circumvented by a studio activity that was fully teacher directed. Such
denial of student agency is even more pointed in another example in which
the teachers determined what politically correct views students should
express. They discussed a photograph of a child holding a gun and were
then instructed to develop images that could be used in an advertisement
against violent behaviour among children. Herrmann rightly argues that
telling students what form their visual responses should take is incongru-
ent with the goal of inculcating critical habits of mind.
No matter how compelling a teacher’s views may appear to him or her-
self, they can be easily rejected by students, and the more firmly and stri-
dently they are advanced, the more this is the case. One truth colliding with
another does not necessarily lead to enlightenment but to retreat, not to
synthesis or compromise but to an endgame. As travel can narrow as well
as expand the mind, so the presentation of alternative ideas can lead to
shutting down minds as much as opening them up. Critiques of popular
culture approached as exposés tend to silence students, and fail to carry
over to life beyond the classroom. Unless students view the issues being
raised through a sense of their own agency, critique remains ‘academic’.
While motivated by a desire to empower students, critical pedagogy ends
up disempowering them and is anything but transformative (Janks 2002).
In helping to open up imagery to an examination of social issues, the
significance of critical theory to art education has been inestimable, but
translated directly into classrooms it has proven to be severely limited.

250 Paul Duncum

ETA_4.3_03_art_Duncum 2/4/09 11:09 AM Page 251

Towards a post-critical, dialogic pedagogy

In seeking to develop a critical consciousness in students about their popu-
lar culture several things are needed. First, it is necessary to reject prima
facie evidence of success and dig a lot deeper than most art educators have
hitherto been prepared to do. It is necessary to appreciate the complex,
ambiguous negotiations students engage in with popular culture within the
equally complex cultures of a classroom. Fortunately, researchers on media
education in Britain have already undertaken much of this work (e.g.,
Buckingham 2003; Buckingham et al. 2005; Buckingham and Sefton-Green
1994; Richards 1998; Sefton-Green and Soep 2007). In Britain, media edu-
cation has been part of the curriculum since the 1930s, and with specialist
Media Schools there is a wealth of experience to draw upon, much of which
has been subject to a sustained research endeavour over the past two
decades.
Like art education to date, media education frequently focuses upon
media stereotypes and audience interpretation. As far back as 1981/1982,
British media educator Williamson found significant traps for unwary teach-
ers in dealing with popular culture stereotypes, ones that the art teachers
mentioned above have unwittingly fallen into. Williamson examined the rep-
resentation of women in teen magazines, especially the magazines’ ideal-
ized, romantic notions of love and relationships. At first, it all seemed so
easy. Drawing upon critical theory, she planned simply to show her students
how unrealistic these representations of romantic love were – and students
would understand. But it was not to be. Initial successes merely masked the
nuances of negotiation and resistance among both boys and girls. The boys
seemed especially keen to take up the topic. Success seemed assured, but to
Williamson’s dismay she found that the topic offered the boys opportunities
to ogle and, as significantly, it reinforced their prior view that girls were weak
minded. About one of the boys she writes, ‘But as we go through his careful
presentation …my flesh creeps at the note of scorn in his voice. After all,
girls read this rubbish don’t they? It just goes to show how stupid they are’
(Williamson 1981/1982: 81). Not until Williamson attacked the boys as
immature, unthinking jocks did they begin to reconsider their views. She
writes, ‘it is not enough just to analyze the media’ (italics in the original,
Williamson 1981/1982: 84). In her view, it was necessary to create a personal
crisis; without trauma, students continue to view popular culture as unbi-
ased, and studying it merely reinforces their existing bias that sees other
people as gullible. Williamson thought she did eventually succeed with the
boys. She also thought she succeeded with two girls who lived in the space
between their actual body shape and their desire to conform to the media
ideal. For these girls, recognizing how unrealistic media bodies seemed to
be at least a first step in accepting their own bodies. But Williamson felt she
had failed with one girl she called Astrid, a pretty blonde, about whom she
writes, ‘her self-image is clearly bound to the things we seem to be attacking.
She sits at the front of the class and says, literally, nothing. She may file her
nails or just stare’ (Williamson 1981/1982: 82).
In 1998, Sue Turnbull critiqued Williamson’s critique of her class. Like
Williamson, Turnbull had taught students about the representation of
romantic love in teen magazines. Drawing upon this experience, and prefig-
uring comments above, Turnbull first suggested that the success Williamson

Thinking critically about critical thinking 251

ETA_4.3_03_art_Duncum 2/24/09 10:06 AM Page 252

believed she claimed she had with the majority of the boys and girls may
have had more to do with their desire to please her than any actual transfor-
mation. Specifically, Turnbull (1998) argued that some students learn to
deny their own pleasures in popular culture in order to satisfy their teachers:
they assume a pose of criticality that imitates the values their teachers not
only espouse but reward. Desiring approval, students assess their pleasures
in popular culture and even their own lives from their teacher’s perspective
and act accordingly in class. In short, seeming to adopt critical conscious-
ness becomes a calculated classroom survival strategy.
On the other hand, art educator Kerry Thomas (2005) argues that stu-
dent collusion is not always calculated. She observes teachers who enter
into dialogue with students but overlook the extent to which their desire for
the teacher’s knowledge/power determines how they operate in class.
Thomas argues that students and teachers alike sometimes unwittingly col-
lude to produce a fiction regarding the extent of student agency. What a
teacher and students jointly see as originating with students frequently
turns out to conform to the teacher’s implicit expectations.
Thus teachers need to be alert to student collusion, whether it is knowing
or unacknowledged. Teachers who accept what students say and produce at
face value as evidence of critical thinking have fallen for a trap set by the nat-
uralization of the school environment and their authority within it. For teach-
ers, schools and their own authoritative position within them seem so
normal they fail to recognize the socially constructed nature of their student
interactions. The historical and contemporary social pressures that deter-
mine the nature of schooling, as well as teachers’ own participation, get
lost in the daily struggle to survive schooling.
Turnbull also suggests that students like Williamson’s Astrid did (and
still do) not show interest for reasons that have nothing to do with being
dumb. Some simply refuse the masquerade others adopt. Realizing that the
cost to themselves is great, they remain silent. They know that their interests
and tastes are politically incorrect. Revealing what they really think and feel
would only draw animosity from teachers and perhaps too from peers, thus
they have no incentive to risk exposure. Seeking to avoid ridicule, at an age
when they are especially sensitive to the opinions of others, they stay quiet.
While the Astrids in the classroom earn the consternation of their teachers
and do poorly when it comes to grades, according to Turnbull, they remain
true to themselves in seeking no approval other than their own.
Turnbull’s account of addressing teen magazines with second-generation
migrant adolescents shows that they understood the contradictions between
the ideologies of popular culture and their own lives. There was no need for
her to point this out. The students like Astrid who remained silent in class
were not stupid. Rather, they were immobilized on the one hand by desiring
romantic love and the possibility of a future career, and on the other hand by
loyalty to family expectations of an early, arranged marriage. In this case, cri-
tiquing unrealistic representations of romance in teen magazines failed to
address the specific dilemma of these particular students.
The critical pedagogy Williamson employed, including an attack on stu-
dents who disagreed with her, reflects the second wave feminism of the
1980s. It was informed by critical theory that assumed a singular truth about
the representation of women. Williamson viewed ideals of romance and body

252 Paul Duncum

ETA_4.3_03_art_Duncum 2/4/09 11:09 AM Page 253

shape straightforwardly as reinforcing male patriarchy and oppression of

women (Funge 1998). Turnbull’s dialogical approach reflects the third wave
feminism of the 1990s that was informed by post-structuralism; it stressed
how people make meaning for themselves irrespective of dominant mean-
ings. Thus Turnbull understands the way young females navigate media
images as empowering rather than disempowering. Today, young females
take third wave, post-structuralist feminism for granted, having absorbed it
through cultural osmosis as part of ordinary daily living in a changed culture
(Bae 2007). Considering this, teachers who continue to adopt a second wave
feminist approach will simply ‘talk past’ students. Coming from different par-
adigms, what teachers say will seem irrelevant to students.
This distinction operates not only among different feminisms but also at
a macro level. Buckingham (2003) understands it as a discord between
modernist and postmodern paradigms. Critical theory tends to operate from
within the binary terms of dominance and a liberating counterpoint in which
a singular truth is opposed by a singular alternative. The singular truth about
gender representation critical pedagogy adopted was essentially modernist
whereas the multiple, contradictory and morally ambiguous truths embraced
by Turnbull’s dialogical pedagogy are quintessentially postmodern.
These distinctions are equally apparent in post-colonial theory with
regard to issues of race, and turn up in classrooms where teaching focuses
on racial and ethnic identities. Chris Cohen (1998) and Julian Sefton-Green
(1990) found teachers responded to racism by deploring racial stereotypes
and offering ‘positive images’ of racial and ethnic identity; they were seem-
ingly unaware of the inherently unstable nature of racial and ethnic identi-
ties as well as the fact that their students read them in diverse and often
contradictory ways. Sara Bragg (2002) found the same thing applied to rep-
resentations of violence and that simply deploring violent imagery failed to
engage with the highly complex range of responses of students.

Dialogical theory and dialogical pedagogy

To go beyond simple applications of critical theory in the classroom, it is
necessary to adopt a dialogic pedagogy that acknowledges something of
the teeming multiplicity of views described above, each jostling with one
another – the postmodern cacophony. This is what Mikhail Bakhtin, in pre-
figuring postmodernism, called a ‘polyphony’ of voices, or ‘heteroglossia’
(Bakhtin 1981: 263), where there is a constant interaction between mean-
ings. Bakhtin believed the truth is always found in dialogue contingent on
actual utterances between people: it is always fragile and never absolute. In
Bakhtin’s terms, critical discourse is too often offered in the form of author-
itarian, even absolutist, monologue. Authoritative discourse is,

privileged language that approaches us from without; it is distanced … and

permits no play with its framing context …. We recite it. IT has great power
over us but only while in power; if ever dethroned it immediately becomes a
dead thing, a relic.
(Bakhtin 1981: 424)

By contrast, once one acknowledges the existence of competing definitions

of the same thing, discourse undergoes a process of ‘dialogization’

Thinking critically about critical thinking 253

ETA_4.3_03_art_Duncum 2/4/09 11:09 AM Page 254

(Bakhtin 1981: 427). Here meaning is created through specific utterances in

specific contexts and one meaning always has the potential to condition
others. Effectively, Bakhtin privileges context over text: whatever happens in
a particular time and space will have a meaning there that it will not have in
quite the same way anywhere else or at any other time.
This appears to be a perfect theoretical fit for what happens in class-
rooms in which teachers explore their own views along with those of stu-
dents. Some art teachers claim to practise just such a ‘dialogic’ pedagogy,
and I contend they offer a signpost to the future. They claim their teaching
follows democratic principles and arises from students as much as them-
selves (e.g. Plummer-Rohloff 2006). They say success is dependent upon
the quality of discussion (Trafi 2006; Kharod 2006). Sheng Kuan Chung
(2006), for example, claims that it is important to situate himself as fellow
learner, not expert, especially in regard to controversial topics such as vio-
lence in the media. In developing a hypertext that connected music videos
to fine art, Pamela Taylor writes, ‘I was learning through the research, con-
nections and interpretations the students made’ (Taylor 2000: 386). In con-
sidering her students’ own cultural experiences and learning more about
their own life issues, Karen Cummings writes, ‘I became a student of my
own classroom’ (Cummings 2007: 297).
Ideas bounce around in dialogic pedagogy. Ideas are sometimes poorly
articulated and search for coherence and connection, but are rich in muli-lay-
eredness, emotional complexity and specific, even specialized, knowledge.
Knowledge is partial, values are ambiguous, dilemmas are profound and reso-
lutions rare. In such classrooms, meaning making is inherently contingent on
Bakhtin’s polyphony of voices uttered in moments in particular classes that
are always subject to a particular classroom dynamic. While patterned, mean-
ing is never wholly predictable and is always unique. A dialogic pedagogy
requires trust between participants – teacher and students. A sense of equal-
ity or at least reciprocal respect is necessary, when the only rule is serious con-
sideration of the multiple and subtle shadings of others’ points of view.
Dialogic pedagogy does not imply abandoning critical examination or
that teachers remain silent about their own views, rather that critical exam-
ination is understood as a conversation between students and students,
and teachers and students. This kind of pedagogy offers opportunities for
students to explore contradictions between popular culture and their own
social situations – home, school and hanging around with peers. Turnbull
(1998) argues that students are caught between their own desires and
familial duties, and this is true of teachers as well. The sooner we acknowl-
edge that our own dilemmas are those of our students, the sooner will we
be in a position to help them speak back to the contradictions they, and we,
face. And the sooner we accept that we are often confused ourselves, the
sooner we are both likely to gain some clarity.
Thomas’ (2005) observations regarding dialogue in the classroom are
critical. She found that even when teachers and students alike were fully
convinced that the views students expressed were their own, and even
believed those views had originated with them, there was an unintended
and unrecognized collusion with the teacher’s perspective. When teachers
fail to express their own positions, students invariably pick them up
through a process of osmosis and hold them at a level it is difficult to

254 Paul Duncum

ETA_4.3_03_art_Duncum 3/2/09 3:06 PM Page 255

analyse let alone recognize as other. Thus, for dialogue to work, teachers
should not only create a safe place for students to open up, they should
articulate their own ideas where they are clearly formed and confess to con-
fusion if not. Turnbull suggests the Astrids will speak up in classrooms
where honest openness occurs and we will find out what they know and
what we do not.

Summary
Research on media education practices advises rejection of critical peda-
gogy in favour of a playful one in which teachers refrain from advancing
their own moral and political positions as if these were true. Instead of just
talking, teachers should listen. Rather than assuming to know what is good
for students, teachers should ask them to articulate their views in open-
ended exploration. Teachers are most effective when they offer opportuni-
ties for students to reflect upon their own, often contradictory, negotiations
with popular culture, though it is unrealistic to expect the process to be
neat, simple or quick. It is messy, patience is necessary and results are not
guaranteed. A dialogic pedagogy recognizes that while critical conscious-
ness is a laudable goal, advocacy by teachers does not lead to critical con-
sciousness among students. Expecting a simple transfer of values from
teacher to student, as if employing a hypodermic syringe, will inevitably
lead to disappointment. Some art teachers appear to have understood this,
and in pursuing critical awareness have adopted a dialogic pedagogy. They
show us what the future of art education could be.

References
Ahn, H. (2007), ‘When Ads Meet Art: Teaching Visual Culture in Korean Elementary
Art Classrooms’, in J. A. Park (ed.), Art Education as Critical Inquiry, Seoul, Korea:
Mijinsa, pp. 234–45.
Bae, M. (2007), Trans-Pacific Popular Mediascape: In Search of Girlhood Through
Korean Teenage Girls’ Image Production and Web Culture, unpublished manu-
script, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (ed. M. Holquist, trans.
C. Emerson and M. Holquist), Austin, TX: University of Texas.
Ballengee-Morris, C. (2002), ‘Tourist Souvenirs’, Visual Arts Research, 28:2, pp. 102–8.
Bragg, S. (2002), ‘Wrestling in Woolly Gloves: Not Just Being “Critically” Media
Literate’, Journal of Popular Film and Television, 30:1, pp. 42–52.
Briggs, J. (2007), ‘Celebrity, Illusion, and Middle School Culture’, Art Education,
60:3, pp. 39–44.
Brown, N. C. M. (2003), ‘Are We Entering a Post-critical Age in Visual Arts
Education?’ Studies in Art Education, 44:3, pp. 285–9.
Buckingham, D. (2003), ‘Media Education and the End of the Critical Consumer’, Harvard
Educational Review, 73:3, ‘http://www.edreview.org/harvard03/2003/fa03/f03buck.
htm’ http://www.edreview.org/harvard03/2003/fa03/f03buck.htm. Accessed 10 June
2005.
Buckingham, D., Banaji, S., Burn, A., Carr, D., Cranmer, S. and Willett, R. (2005), The
Media Literacy of Children and Young People: A Review of the Research Literature on
Behalf of Ofcom’, ‘http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/medlitpub/
medlitpubrss/ml_children.pdf’ www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/
medlitpub/medlitpubrss/ml_children.pdf. Accessed 2 December 2006.

Thinking critically about critical thinking 255

ETA_4.3_03_art_Duncum 2/24/09 10:16 AM Page 256

Buckingham, D. and Sefton-Green, J. (1994), Cultural Studies Goes to School: Reading

and Teaching Popular Media, London: Taylor & Francis.
Burn, A. and Durran, J. (2006), ‘Digital Anatomies: Analysis as Production in Media
Education’, in D. Buckingham and R. Willett (eds), Digital Generations: Children,
Young People, and New Media, Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 273–93.
Chung, S. K. (2006), ‘The Challenges and Promises of Visual Culture Art Education’,
in P. Duncum (ed.), Visual Culture in the Art Class: Case Studies, Reston, VA:
National Art Education Association, pp. 109–16.
Cohen, P. (1998), ‘Tricks of the Trade: On Teaching Arts and “Race” in the
Classroom’, in D. Buckingham (ed.), Teaching Popular Culture: Beyond Radical
Pedagogy, London: UCL Press, pp. 153–76.
Cummings, K. L. (2007), Webs, Windows, and Reflections: Experiences in a Secondary
Art Classroom’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign.
Duncum, P. (2007), ‘What We are Learning About Teaching Popular Visual Culture’,
in M. A. Park (ed.), Art Education as Critical Cultural Inquiry, Seoul, Korea:
Mijinsa, pp. 216–33.
—— (2005), ‘Critical Thinking in, About and Through Visual Culture’, Journal of
Research in Art and Education, 6:1, pp. 21–35.
—— (1989), ‘Towards Foundations for a Socially Critical Art Education’, The Journal
of Social Theory in Art Education, 9, pp. 12–25.
Feldman, E. (1982), ‘Varieties of Art Curriculum’, Journal of Art and Design Education, 1:1,
pp. 21–45.
Funge, E. (1998), ‘Rethinking Representation: Media Studies and the Postmodern
Teenager’, English and Media Magazine, 39, pp. 33–6.
Gaudelius, Y. (2000), ‘Feminist and Critical Pedagogies: Intersections and Divergences’,
in D. F. Fehr, K. Fehr and K. Keifer-Boyd (eds), Real-world Readings in Art Education:
Things Your Professors Never Told You, New York: Falmer Press, pp. 21–8.
Green, B. (1998), ‘Teaching for Difference: Learning Theory and Post-critical
Pedagogy’, in D. Buckingham (ed.), Teaching Popular Culture: Beyond Radical
Pedagogy, London: UCL Press, pp. 177–97.
Herrmann, R. (2005), ‘The Disconnect Between Theory and Practice in a Visual
Culture Approach to Art Education’, Art Education, 58:6, pp. 41–6.
Higgins, B. (2007), ‘Visual Culture in Elementary School’, paper presented at the
Annual National Art Education Association Conference, New York.
Honderich, T. (1995), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford, England: Oxford
University Press.
Janks, H. (2002), ‘Critical Literacy: Beyond Reason’, Australian Educational Researcher,
29:1, pp. 7–26.
Kharod, K. (2006), ‘Using Cultural and Gender Studies Questioning Methods in
Grade Four: An Interdisciplinary Approach’, in P. Duncum (ed.), Visual Culture in
the Art Class: Case Studies, Reston, VA: National Art Education Association,
pp. 32–8.
Lee, J-Y. (2007), ‘Qualitative Art Curriculum Research: A Case Study of an Inquiry-
based Art Curriculum’, in J. A. Park (ed.), Art Education as Critical Inquiry, Seoul,
Korea: Mijinsa, pp. 310–21.
McFee, J. K. (1961), Preparation for Art, San Francisco: Wadsworth.
Plummer-Rohloff, R. (2006), ‘Beyond the Circus: Grounding a Visual Culture
Pedagogy’, in P. Duncum (ed.), Visual Culture in the Art Class: Case Studies,
Reston, VA: National Art Education Association, pp. 65–72.

256 Paul Duncum

ETA_4.3_03_art_Duncum 2/5/09 10:29 AM Page 257

Polaniecki, S. (2006), ‘Teaching through TV: Transformative Encounters with

Constructed Reality’, in P. Duncum (ed.), Visual Culture in the Art Class: Case
Studies, Reston, VA: National Art Education Association, pp. 39–46.
Richards, C. (1998), ‘Beyond Classroom Culture’, in D. Buckingham (ed.), Teaching
Popular Culture: Beyond Radical Pedagogy, London: UCL Press, pp. 132–52.
Sefton-Green, J. (1990), ‘Teaching and Learning About Representation: Culture and
The Crosby Show in a North London Comprehensive’, in D. Buckingham (ed.),
Watching Media Learning: Making Sense of Media Education, London: Farmer,
pp. 127–50.
Sefton-Green, J. and Soep, E. (2007), ‘Creative Media Cultures: Making and
Learning Beyond the School’, in L. Bresler (ed.), International Handbook of
Research in Arts Education, Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, pp. 835–54.
Smith, R. A. (1981), ‘Elitism Versus Popularism: A Question of Quality’, Art
Education, 34:3, pp. 4–5.
Tavin, K. and Anderson, D. (2003), ‘Teaching (Popular) Visual Culture:
Deconstructing Disney in the Elementary Classroom’, Art Education, 56:3,
pp. 21–4, 33–5.
Taylor, P. (2000), ‘Madonna and Hypertext: Liberatory Learning in Art Education’,
Studies in Art Education, 41:4, pp. 376–89.
Thomas, K. (2005), ‘“My Inspiration?” Misrecognition as Cause of Creativity in the
Authoring of Senior School Students’ Artworks’, paper presented at the National
Art Education Association Conference, Boston.
Trafi, L. (2006), ‘Preschoolers Interpreting Visions of Childhood’, in P. Duncum
(ed.), Visual Culture in the Art Class: Case Studies, Reston, VA: National Art
Education Association, pp. 1–11.
Turnbull, S. (1998), ‘Dealing with Feeling: Why Girl Number Twenty Still Doesn’t
Answer’, in D. Buckingham (ed.), Teaching Popular Culture: Beyond Radical
Pedagogy, London: UCL Press, pp. 88–106.
Williamson, J. (1985), ‘Is there Anyone Here from a Classroom?’ Screen, 26:1, pp. 90–5.
—— (1981/1982), ‘How does Girl Number Twenty Understand Ideology?’, Screen
Education, 40, pp. 80–7.

Suggested citation
Duncum, P. (2008), ‘Thinking critically about critical thinking: towards a post-critical,
dialogic pedagogy for popular visual culture’, International Journal of Education
through Art 4: 3, pp. 247–257, doi: 10.1386/eta.4.3.247/1

Contributor details
Paul Duncum is Professor of Art Education at the School of Art and Design,
University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. He is widely published in art education in
the areas of his research interests, which include popular visual culture, children’s
unsolicited drawing, images of children in popular media and critical theory.
Contact:
E-mail: pduncum@illinois.edu

Thinking critically about critical thinking 257