Pedagogical art critism as a subdiscipline in arts education and an example of application

One of the most significant objectives of education is to enable students to think critically. When level of critical thinking of students increases; art education can improve their ability to review and to appreciate an artistic work. To this end; main purpose of the current study was to determine whether or not practices of pedagogical artistic criticism used in visual arts course had an influence upon the level of students' ability to criticize an artistic work. At the same time; the second objective was that artistic criticism –which is one of the four disciplines of pedagogical criticism method would be analyzed. Thus; 100 8th graders of a secondary school were asked to review Picasso's painting "Child with a Dove " in terms of four disciplines. The data gathered using a questionnaire form were analyzed with frequency and percentages. These data were processed using SPSS for Windows 22.00 statistics software package. According to the results of the questionnaire; students successfully analyzed the painting "Child with a Dove" and were able to describe what the painting inspired for their imaginations, what artistic work it was, what it depicted and to tell its name and the period when it was produced in terms of description, analysis, interpretation and judgment. Key Word: Pedagogy, Art Criticism, Pedagogy Criticism, Education, Art Education