Abstract:

One of the most desired outcomes of formal education is claimed to be critical thinking. The role of critical thinking skill in everyday problem-solving process is indispensable. Concept mapping is considered to be a metacognitive approach that facilitates critical thinking through meaningful learning. Previous study results indicate that art education can promote and improve the humanistic cultivation of students, it also enhances students to question, explore and change their beliefs and perspectives, which are also the main aspects of critical thinking. In the current study we composed an artistic critical thinking questionnaire based on Berger’s (2008) book, we also designed a 5-session online art history training, to measure art knowledge we used Vienna Art Interest and Art Knowledge Questionnaire (VAIAK). We investigated the effect of the online art history training on artistic critical thinking, as well as examining the effects of concept mapping on artistic thinking. Non- art university students have been gathered (N = 51), then randomly distributed into two groups. Each group participated in a 5-session online art history training, during Covid 19 lockdown. In one group beside the art history training, concept mapping process have been used as note taking process. Our main result revealed no significant interaction between art knowledge and concept mapping, however there was a substantial main effect for training intervention, with both groups showing increase in artistic critical thinking scores. We can conclude that our online art history training enhanced artistic critical thinking score, however concept mapping did not have a significant impact on artistic critical thinking.

Keywords:

Art history training, artistic critical thinking, online training, concept map.