Disrupting Assessments: Enacting Criticality Through the Power of the Arts

Settler colonialism layers the intentional displacement, subjugation, and genocide of Indigenous Peoples by means of physical control over land, sea, rivers, and material resources. While functioning as a profoundly violent and exploitative system, settler colonialism also serves as a theatre of enduring resistance and activism. As schools operate in this socio-political context, they are not without intent or design. This chapter focuses on the use of critical arts-based assessments as tools to strategically grow learners’ criticality and reposition the act of teaching in dominant spaces in Initial Teacher Education (ITE). Utilising a multi-theoretical lens derived from Critical Race Theory and decolonial thought, we carefully unspool our approach to teaching, where pedagogy, content, and assessment are deployed as deliberate acts of resistance and activism. We use this foundation to engage with culturally-responsive pedagogical strategies, returning them to their theoretical roots, as deliberate tactics to counter the limiting factors we raise in this discussion. Our chapter is intended to draw attention to schools’ role in settler-colonial societies like Australia. It offers strategies that enable future teachers to advance their agency as educational leaders in dominant spaces.