Communication has always been at least partly a visual experience--insofar as the speaker's appearance on a stage or the text's appearance on the page. Certainly, however, the experience is becoming more and more visual. Thus, equipping students with the tools necessary to analyze and evaluate the visual rhetoric that surrounds everyone is a task…

A method of pedagogical art criticism can be used to examine meaning in one of today's most pervasive forms of visual imagery: the advertising image. It was necessary for the art critical method to accommodate the following components of advertising imagery: (1) history; (2) purpose in a capitalist society; (3) function in society; (4) effects on…

Discusses how to teach critical thinking about television and describes methods used in a college class on television analysis. Two approaches are examined: television content analysis, with an example of sports commentary; and analyzing television viewing, including a questionnaire developed by students. (five references) (LRW)

Analyzes the art criticism of nine university art education students writing about the work of Robert Rauschenberg. Identifies the students' use or nonuse of thematic unity, intertextuality, opposition, and description. These thinking strategies are primarily found in the works of three professional art critics. (MJP)

Criticizes the traditional approach to art education that emphasizes formal properties such as line, color, and shape. Proposes that teachers develop student abilities to go beyond the visual level of artworks and gain access to the complexity of meanings that art possesses. Includes contemporary art examples and corresponding analyses. (MJP)

Examines types and functions of useful definitions of art in education. Considers the strengths and limitations of functionalist and proceduralist definitions. Identifies art as a concept operating within a culture; therefore, recommends embracing a variety of definitions to be used in contextually significant ways. (MJP)

Maintains that the various components of philosophical inquiry (reasoning, forming concepts, translating) can serve as useful methods for art education research. Discusses four approaches to philosophical research: analytic, phenemenological, feminist, and pragmatic. Reviews examples of each drawn from recent art education literature. (MJP)