The studio critique (crit) is a firmly established and fiercely defended part of
undergraduate art and design education, both here in the UK and in many other
parts of the western world. It is an established and important part of a studiobased
culture, where teachers and students can discuss, experiment with and
develop ideas and concepts within a 'supportive environment.' This thesis
examines the role and nature of the formative feedback received by students
and given by teachers and sometimes student peers at the crit, and examines
the crit's contribution to design students' current and future learning.
The data in this study is collected through a series of individual interviews with
design students and teachers, together with interviewed student focus groups
and crit observations in three UK Institutions. This data is analysed with
reference to current literature on formative assessment and feedback and
student learning.
The thesis premises that how effectively students learn in the critique and the
understanding and benefit gained from the formative feedback they receive is
not just reliant on the quality and focus of the formative feedback, but could also
be affected by other factors such as the power position (Devas, 2004, Sara and
Parnell, 2004), the stress factor (Pope, 2005) and what Kluger and DeNisi
(1996) call the self or meta factor, where the quality of feedback interventions
together with students' prior learning experience or understanding (Prosser &
Trigwell, 1999) can impact on students' persona of themselves. This can affect
the cognitive resources applied to the activities of the critique. The thesis
identifies four main learning activities in the crit and suggests that cognitive
learning is often impacted on by four main categories of perception of self. This,
the thesis argues, can result in impaired or surface student learning
