ABSTRACT. Opening up one’s work to critique can place a creator in a vulnerable position. We explore what kindness might bring to the tricky, emotionally charged, risky event of the critique. Can kindness enhance the critique’s potential to be educational, by nurturing the creator’s capacity to create newness? For us, kindness is not lenience, but emerges in nonviolent encounters with difference, in which the self is open and susceptible to being moved by difference, seeking even to preserve it. We offer a definition of critique in the context of education. We draw on theory and practice in art education and family therapy to propose how critics might enact kindness while forming their critique, by grounding their comments in their nonviolent encounter with the work being considered.
Keywords: critique; subjectivity; kindness; encounter; newness; nonviolence
How to cite: Yoon, C., and Penwarden, S. (2021). “Kindness in Educational Critique,” Knowledge Cultures 9(3): 169–183. doi: 10.22381/kc93202110.
Received 23 July 2021 • Received in revised form 17 October 2021
Accepted 24 October 2021 • Available online 1 December 2021