A Focus on Pedagogy 2026

Across Teaching, Theory, Technologies & Times

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Strand Call: Critical Thinking in the Art School

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We are skilled at fostering criticality in our students. Yet how that critical gaze is applied to our own pedagogies, programmes, and institutions remains uneven and often implicit. Art schools celebrate “critical thinking,” yet its enactment is shaped by inherited formats, disciplinary traditions, and shifting technological and social forces.

This strand call invites staff and student perspectives to interrogate and reimagine the pedagogic, spatial, and institutional containers through which criticality is cultivated. We are particularly interested in enacted and student-centred approaches — work that shows how critical thinking is lived in studios, workshops, and shared spaces; how it shapes hybrid learning experiences and curriculum structures; and how it emerges through informal pedagogic practices.

We welcome contributions that demonstrate and question criticality in action, bridging, challenging, and learning from approaches across disciplinary and institutional contexts.

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Glasgow School of Art

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Founded in 1845, the Glasgow School of Art is one of the few remaining independent art schools in the UK. With a proven history of producing some of the world’s most influential and successful artists, designers and architects, the GSA’s studio-based specialist, practice-led education draws talented individuals with a shared passion and concern for visual culture from all over the world. The GSA is ranked 3rd in the UK and 13th in the world (QS World rankings 2024).

There is no GSA without Glasgow, and arguably no Glasgow of the past 150 years without the GSA. Walking around the city, you’ll spot the influence of the School and its graduates in its buildings, in its shop windows, and in its theatres, galleries, restaurants and record shops. The spirit of the city buzzes through its festivals, cultural institutions and events, but can also be found in more ad-hoc spaces, and in conversations between its creative residents. Although Glasgow is still very much the heart of the GSA, in recent years we have established an idyllic Highlands and Islands campus, as well as a representative office in China. We also maintain important connections and partnerships with institutions across Europe and the rest of the world, offering exchange opportunities and collaborating on projects with international students, tutors and practitioners. Our DNA can also be found in the footprints of our graduates, many of whom choose to stay in Glasgow as an important part of the city’s creative ecology, but who can also be found across the world, presenting, addressing, and finding innovative solutions to some of society’s most important questions.

Our studio-based approach to research and teaching is focused on developing intense specialisms alongside collaborative practice. Our studios are a site of interdisciplinarity, peer learning, critical enquiry and prototyping, where our students, tutors, and researchers address problems in new ways and find innovative solutions. Our links to other academic institutions, research partners, and the wider creative industries help us address many of the challenges confronting Glasgow and the wider world.

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