McDonald and Michaela (2019) explore ‘moral goods’ and ‘the critique’ – from the perspective of what matters for studio instructors. This provoked me to reflect – what matters to me? – how does this affect my instruction and the diverse students I teach.
The term critique is not unproblematic – the emphasis is on the critical, and outside of the academic context, this is perhaps something which humans try to avoid being, in day-to-day life. The crit’ can range from the traditional presentation of a student’s work, followed by an interrogation, to one-to-one feedback. It is with the former that I first had experience, as both tutor and assessor, on the UAL Pre-sessional English (PSE) in 2021.
The crit forms the primary speaking element of the PSE assessment, for which students who speak English as an additional language need to reach a threshold grading to progress to their main courses at UAL. It is this participation which often causes the greatest anxiety, especially for those more introverted learners. The students develop a creative project and then present their work, followed by a Q&A by 2 tutors (and sometimes students). Over the 4 years that I have been doing this course, the time allocated for the presentation has been incrementally reduced and vis-a-vis the time for critique has increased. This is presumably because it is the most exposing of communicative ability – presentations can be learned by rote – or read from script. I encourage students to move away from this rote learning to make it as live as possible, both for pragmatics – passing the course, and perhaps for fostering something more moral– developing a fundamentally human skill in the age of machines.
From the position of ‘moral realism,’ how we take part in the world is manifest as ‘participation in practice,’ and this practice involves (normative) ‘real moral reference points’ (Yanchar and Slife, 2017, p.165). Using this frame, McDonald and Michela (2019) investigate three types of ‘moral goods’: student development; teacher/practitioner self-cultivation; and for other stakeholders, through investigating how instructors talk about critiques. The paper finds that these moral goods can both reinforce and pull against each other – and that instructors are often mistaken in their view of a good and that this can interfere with actually achieving it (Ibid, p.28).
AI has already revolutionized the way in which we can produce text and is therefore becoming a less reliable measure of communicative, academic and professional capacity. In future, the viva – currently reserved for Phd students – may become part of the method for assessment for written papers at other levels. This would increase the need for students to embrace the critique, however how instructors should approach this regarding diversity is another point for reflection. My point of departure here, drawing on Harris (2022. P101), is to investigate how I can help make this form of participation meet the historically underrepresented needs of introverted learners, whilst building skill and confidence through practice.
Harris, K. (2022), ‘Embracing the silence: introverted learning and the online classroom’ Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, 5 (1) 101-104
McDonald, J. and Michela, E. (2019), ‘The design critique and the moral goods of studio pedagogy,’ Design Studies 62 (2019) 1- 35
Yanchar, S. C., & Slife, B. D. (2017), ‘Theorizing inquiry in the moral space of practice’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 14(2)146 -170. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2016.1264517. (Accessed on 11.01.25)