Analyzing Art and Pedagogy in the Classroom: Assignment Overview

This assignment delves into the integration of art as a pedagogical tool in sociology education. It begins by outlining the author's teaching philosophy, emphasizing informal and involving classroom environments, and the strategic use of art to foster critical thinking skills among high school students. The assignment includes an analysis of a specific lesson on intersectionalism, using Artemisia Gentileschi's painting of Judith beheading Holofernes as a visual aid to spark discussion and critical engagement with historical significance. It also incorporates a poem titled "Dear Mr. Gove" by Jess Green, which critiques the existing educational system and its impact on teachers and students. Further, the assignment discusses an educational podcast focused on critical thinking, defining it as the ability to think rationally and practically, and highlighting its importance in developing independent understanding and reasoning skills. Finally, the assignment explores various theories of critical thinking, including reasoning, critical discussion, and cognitive mechanisms, emphasizing the benefits of critical thinking in fostering curiosity, creativity, and independent decision-making among students. The author references multiple sources to support their arguments and provide a comprehensive overview of the topic.

Running head: ART AND PEDAGOGY
ART AND PEDAGOGY
Name of the University:
Name of the Student:
Author Note:

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Assignment 1:
I am a sociology teacher and I essentially teach the high school students, and I like to
make the class environment as informal and involving as possible, applying different approaches
of pedagogy. The pedagogical approaches are very helpful in order to approach the students and
their needs in a strategic manner, and at the same time the pedagogical tools and approaches help
to motivate the students critically. It helps in motivating the students to be able to think critically
and therefore practice the same, in their daily lives. Gill Glazer, it is only through the
incorporation of the pedagogical approaches, that the critical thinking abilities of the students can
be extended and increased.
Therefore, in my classroom I practice the use of art as a tool for education. According to
Freedman, the usage of the visual images or the visual pedagogical tools are very effective in
practicing teaching skills, and in establishing a learning environment within the classroom. He
opined that the visual images help the students to develop a belief very easily and to inflict their
critical thinking skills. May thinkers, have also opined that art is the most effective tool to
practice questioning. The images that are shown to us make us think and perceive in different
ways and therefore make us question the entity and the existing practices, and this is essentially
effective in case of social sciences (Naughton, Biesta, and Cole. 2017).
Being a sociology teacher I have found the practice of images to be very effective sand
thought provoking in my class. Below, is an example of a particular topic that I had been
teaching in class. In the class I had been discussing about Intersectionalism is the class, and I had
used the following picture.

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This picture depicts the beheading of the Holofernes by Judith. This particular story has a
huge historical significance. It is basically a story of a beautiful widow, and the scene with
Holofernes shows her courage and her love for her country. This particular story had been a the
contents and the motivation of the France Revolution, and many painters and sculptures had
included this particular vary of the story as their topic of art. Therefore, in my class, I have used
this picture, painted by the famous female painter Artemisia Gentileschi, in order to create a
good impact of the incident upon the minds of my children. The story holds a significance, but
more importantly, this particular story has been provided with many historical significances over
the time. Therefore, I use this particular picture, not only to welcome the attention of my students
but at the same time, in order to motivate them and to make them think about the incident in a
number of ways, the picture is one of the most famous works of all time, and therefore, is very
powerful, thus can invoke critical thinking among the students.

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Assignment 2:
Dear Mr. Gove by Jess Green
Dear Mr. Gove is a very powerful poem about the teachers and the students and the entire
women of the society. Jess Green is a pedagogical teacher at a school, and currently she is a
performer and a writer. She belongs from a family of teachers and had created a major impact on
the entire educational system of England. The poem simply talked about the position of teachers
at that time at schools and the problems they had to face. The poem talks about the entire
educational system and its practices. The poem was directed at Michael Goves, and is regarded
as the conservative politician, who was in charge of the educational administration of the
country. In the poem Green had hugely criticized the existing educational system along with
Groves, and determined that particular time as the dark time for the teachers and the students as
well. In the poem she talked about the prolonged timings that the educational systems were
practicing. The students had to stay at the schools for almost the entire day, and the teachers had
to stay even longer. Also, the student to teacher ratio was unfair and impractical. One teacher
was assigned r more than 50 students, and she had to take continuous classes since the morning.
More importantly, the respect and the position of the teachers in the country was poorly, and the
women teacher were provided with no respect. They were not considered to be working
anywhere. In the poem it was found that the teachers are required to behold the attention of the
students in all ways possible, either by entertaining them or by being an eye candy, in the class,
as had been suggested by the present chancellor (YouTube. 2020). Dear Mr. Gove also stayed
about the inability of the students to comprehend this much amount of syllabus in a very short
period of time, claiming that most of the syllabus was impractical and not required for the
children to complete.

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Assignment 3:
Educational Podcast:
Educational podcasts are created or made in order to generate an awareness regarding the
education system or the educational practices that take place in a particular social set up.
Therefore, the aim of this particular assignment aims at explaining the podcast that had taken
place to develop an awareness among the students regarding the need for the development of
cognitive thinking among the students. The podcast was particularly aiming at developing a
conversation, defining critical thinking and developing an understanding regarding the need of
critical thinking.
The podcast had focused especially on the definition of critical thinking, which stated that
critical thinking is the ability to think rationally and practically. It refers to pointing out the logic
behind ideas, and finding out logical links between two topics. The basic aspect and requirement
of critical thinking is the ability of person to reason. According to the researchers developing an
ability to reason the concepts and the topics and the ideologies by the students is very important,
as, firstly, it shows the level of understanding of the students. The ability of the students to
reason a topic or an ideology refers that the student has gained a complete and sound
understanding of the ideologies or the topics that they are introduced to. It refers that they can
analyze the assumptions and can clarify the reasons behind the assumptions. A sound
understanding among the students regarding a particular topic determines that the students have
provided enough thought about it, and therefore can understand and answer anything related to
the same topic. This leads to the second important aspect of critical thinking abilities, which is,
the development of the critical thinking skill determines that the students have an independent
understanding (Teaching in Higher Ed. 2020). The independent understanding refers to the

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ability to develop personal thinking and to develop an ability to reason everything by oneself.
The independent thinking ability refers to develop an understanding which will make one to
question and justify everything, rather than being a passive recipient of the information. Thus,
analyzing concepts on one’s own, and recognize the underlying meanings and factors in order to
develop an argument. The skill of independent understanding refers to approaching the problems
in a different and customized way. Thus, the critical thinking ability of the students help them to
arrive at the best possible solutions.
Assignment 4:
The ability to think critically is regarded to be the tool for education, and the researchers
have opined that in the pedagogical understanding and practices the implementation or the
incorporation of critical thinking as an educational tool is very effective. The skills of critical
thinking basically practices and promotes the ability of the students to grow an ability to
understand and practice independently, and also the ability to question and look for the
alternative possibilities.
However, the theories of critical thinking uses essentially three theories, the theories of
reasoning which refers to the development of the search for alternative possibilities and to grow
among them the ability to question. The second theory is the theory of critical discussion, which
refers to grow an ability among the students to question the existing concept and to decide by
themselves, and searching for new information.
A third theory is the theory of cognitive mechanism, which refers to the holistic view of
education, including understating of a concept creating a belief, looking for newer information to
oppose the belief, and thereupon, developing a decision making skill or ability to evaluate among

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the information and develop a sound understanding of the considered concept. It also makes the
students to practice their ability to evaluate and practice the skills of validity and reliability
(Secules, Sochacka, and Walther. 2018).
In this essence it is important to discuss the benefits of critical thinking abilities.
 Firstly, the ability to think generates among the students a curiosity, and therefore,
enables them to look for the newer information.
 Secondly, the ability to think critically make the students creative. Since they have a
sound understanding and foundation of information, therefore they can choose and apply
them, in their own ways, and therefore, practice independent decision making ability,
paving the way to generate more new information (Huang, and Li. 2017).
The basic aspects and the common ground that all these three theories have highlighted is the
practice of thinking. Thinking, is the prime requirement to develop the skills of critical thinking
or critical cognition. The students must be equipped enough to think intellectually to develop he
sound understanding and to practice reliability, and validity and therefore practice an
independent decision making skill.

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References:
Huang, R. and Li, Y. eds., 2017. Teaching and learning mathematics through variation:
Confucian heritage meets western theories. Springer.
Marshall, E., 2018. Activist Schoolgirls: Documenting Segregation and Residential Schooling in
Auto/biographical Picture Books. In Graphic Girlhoods (pp. 93-106). Routledge.
Naughton, C., Biesta, G. and Cole, D.R. eds., 2017. Art, artists and pedagogy: Philosophy and
the arts in education. Routledge.
Secules, S., Sochacka, N.W. and Walther, J., 2018. New directions from theory: Implications for
diversity support from the theories of intersectionality and liberatory pedagogy. In The
Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity Conference.

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Teaching in Higher Ed. (2020). Developing critical thinking skills with Tine Reimers – Teaching
in Higher Ed. [online] Available at: https://teachinginhighered.com/podcast/critical-thinking/
[Accessed 24 Jan. 2020].
YouTube. (2020). Dear Mr Gove: a poem by Jess Green. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOiyA_0ku9I [Accessed 24 Jan. 2020].