the project for the discourse analysis is drawn from pupil interviews with IoE
researchers and from action researchers’ final reviews.
The London Cluster was particularly concerned to identify the critical thinking
needed for pupils to develop an understanding of unfamiliar art and institutional
contexts. It is not surprising that pupils lack an awareness of the critical turn in
contemporary art as they gain access to contemporary practices through television and
the popular press (research entry pupil questionnaires attest 70 percent). Within these
sites the coverage is usually limited to sensational work that challenges conventional
expectations and moral standards; in this way contemporary art comes to appear
absurd and deficient, even pornographic [5]. The Critical Minds project was therefore
a vehicle through which these characterisations of contemporary art could be
questioned and a fruitful dialogue developed between the pedagogic needs and
interests of pupils and teachers and the concerns of artists, critics, curators and
researchers. The IoE research team recognized a strong correspondence here with the
aims of critical pedagogy in which dialogue is seen as a prerequisite for questioning
popular preconceptions and given traditions, the start of a process that can ultimately
transform attitudes, practices and values [6]. These transformative processes are
central to the reflexive, dialogical and socially engaged practices of many
contemporary artists whose work challenges normative practices and naturalised
beliefs. By engaging with contemporary art as a meaning making process pupils
began not only to perceive art as a type of critique but to turn their critical thinking
towards aspects of their own lives questioning assumptions about their habituated
ways of learning and the institutional systems that label them as specific kinds of
learners.