| This study investigates teacher and student enactment of the Critical Response Protocol (CRP) to support the interpretation of meaning from contemporary visual art in a museum gallery setting. This study focuses closely on one, situated enactment of CRP to more deeply understand its general value, its effective use and the form of learning that it may support or constrain. Learning is theorized as sociocultural, and revealed in shifting identities of participants situated within discourses (Gee, 2008). The theoretical framework for the study is Mediated Discourse Analysis (MDA) (Scollon & Scollon, 2003; Norris & Jones,2005) with methodological tools drawn from critical ethnography (Fine & Weis, 2005), educational critique (Eisner, 1998), critical discourse analysis (Gee, 2008; Fairclough, 2001) and cultural studies (Bourriaud, 2002; Ngai, 2005). The identified nexus of this study is an encounter between a 10th grade student and his English teacher practicing CRP before a large contemporary painting as part of a larger creative writing assignment. The activity surfaced within a six- year engagement as an aspect of an art museum-based literacy program called Artful Writing. During that time, a digital audio of the episode was promoted to practitioners and students as a model of successful CRP practice. The study reveals unexamined tensions between teaching goals of critical thinking, critical literacy and aesthetic processes. Intending to support critical literacy, this CRP practice was constrained by both teacher and student assumptions surrounding aesthetic response, the artist's intention and artistic voice, and by a persistent, normative classroom discourse valuing calm, sequenced and reasoned interpretation. |
