Entry 5: Writing the Review

Having consumed a LOT of literature, I have decided that the focus or angle I am going to take for my literature review will revolve around the power that visual arts inquiry can have on the development of students’ critical and creative thinking and lifelong learning skills.


Some of the concepts/aspects central to inquiry that I have been inspired by and that I will include in my literature review include:

Questioning:  inquiry encourages students to question and critically interrogate information and the world around them.  It fosters inquisitiveness and engages students as active thinkers and investigators.  Does not promote passivity or idleness.  Meaning becomes problematic.

Critical and creative thinking:  art inquiry teaches students to think in divergent and innovative ways.  It promotes problem solving, higher order thinking and metacognition.  It encourages students to explore different views, values and attitudes and emphasises that there is no one right way of thinking or being in the world.

Collaboration and active learning:  students build on their prior knowledge to construct new understandings for themselves.  Peers and the teacher as facilitator enable co-inquiry to occur and students grapple with and assimilate the views and ideas of others to create new knowledge and understanding.

Information literacy:  students are required to draw on and interpret multiple forms of literacy - in visual, digital, multimedia forms.  They must decode symbols and signs, question, evaluate, interpret, analyse and synthesise information and ideas.

Having compiled notes from the literature and being in the process of composing my review, I have decided that I may benefit from another narrower search that is specifically related to the focus of my paper and the arguments/ideas I wish to develop.

I choose Proquest from the databases listed under ‘Education’ on the library website and conduct an advanced search using the terms: 

art

AND

inquiry

AND

“critical thinking” OR creativity

I find a number of interesting articles, including the following:

Creativity and Imagination: Tools for Teaching Artistic Inquiry

Karen Heid. Art Education. Reston: Jul 2008. Vol. 61, Iss. 4; pg. 40, 7 pgs

Thinking Outside and On the Box: Creativity and Inquiry in Art Practice

Julia Marshall. Art Education. Reston: Mar 2010. Vol. 63, Iss. 2; pg. 16, 8 pgs

Enhancing Critical Thinking with Aesthetic, Critical, and Creative Inquiry

Nancy Lampert. Art Education. Reston: Sep 2006. Vol. 59, Iss. 5; pg. 46, 5 pgs

REFLECTION

While the new sources I have found aid in cementing or confirming the stance I have taken in relation to the topic, the approach and argument I have developed for my literature review changes very little.  This aligns with Kuhlthau's definition of a summary search - a search conducted in the presentation stage to recheck information or to ensure nothing has been overlooked (2007, p.84).  While I am still not entirely happy with the 'flow' of my paper (I still think the linking of ideas and concepts can be improved or extended), I am satisfied that I have 'enough' quality information for the purpose of the task.