So excited to see my chapter in print this summer. Publishing work is a long and archaic process, it feels medieval in its venerable qualities. 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Practice-Focused-Research-Further-Vocational-Education/dp/3030389936/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=practice+focused+research&qid=1599745167&s=books&sr=1-1 

Chapter 7 :  

Developing Critical Thinking and Professional Identity in the Arts Through Story. 

By Frances Norton.

Extract from Chapter 7

Brown (1998, p. 189) states that the idea of educating students in an atmosphere of equality and joint inquiry could maximise each student’s access to the legacy of the critical traditions might at first appear to be a high risk strategy. He goes further describing critical thinking interventions in education as an invitation to classroom disorder. Positive, creative, fruitful disorder is what I was hoping for when I embarked on this research journey. Close reading of the ideas of Lipman (2003) reveals that he turns his back on confrontational, rote, shame based teaching and instead advocates, telling stories to each other. Lipman observes that the education system can sometimes operate as a machine to create ‘biddable’ citizens who cannot think for themselves. Some of the Access students I teach have had a rough ride through education, and silent resistance with a set face is a polite version of the strong emotions their educational past brings up.  

Brown and Lipman offer us a soft skills alternative approach to teaching critical thinking (CT) which has a radical undertone. Art education in its best form allows for experimentation, unpicking past knowledge and remaking it with surprising new elements. Access students readily came to lunch time experimental critical thinking interventions involved in the research. They understand the value of social and cultural capital, and they do not want to be left out of the big conversations any more. Reading and adapting Brown and Lipman’s ideas, I developed Community of Inquiry interventions with my students Some students found critical thinking interventions moving, vocabulary expanding, healing, new horizon finding authentic and ‘true’. 

This chapter reports different perspectives of practitioners of the Arts, educational theorists, Arts educators and students regarding the development of critical thinking. Definitions, problems, and issues in the development of critical thinking are considered in some depth. The stories of students of the Arts and those of their lecturers and other education practitioners regarding their experiences of engaging in the pedagogical interventions in the study are presented and discussed. 

This chapter concludes by drawing attention to the ways in which pedagogy in HE has become overly concerned with the acquisition of narrow learning ‘outcomes’ and preoccupations with highly prescriptive curricula, to the detriment of considerations of enduring educational issues and the development of more creative pedagogical approaches potentially capable of encouraging students to think critically, creatively and for themselves (Lipman 2003).