Hasaan Kirkland, Associate Professor of Art, Johnson C. Smith
University Extensive studies are showing that a large portion of
educators are struggling in recent time to maintain the
attention and learning energy of current students, “Millennial
Students,” with the same old bag of tricks. I have often located
visual forms of media through magazines, commercial ads, visual
art or even logo driven clothing apparel (i.e., Nike, RocaWear,
Baby Phat, Enyce, Gucci, Prada, Guess etc.) as a means to
capture an avenue that would possibly lead students to critical
thoughts and educated awareness about a given subject or topic.
This not only provides critical thinking but also self-discovery
and the ability to gain an identity through education and art.
Comparative analysis through visual literacy, critical thinking,
and art, can establish contributions from social, cultural, and
political resources that characterize identity formation
(Caruso,p. 74). For example, Lackey suggests that understanding
magazines as pedagogi