The dissertation research is prompted by a perceived disconnect between the conceptualizations of artwriting and criticism writing in existing art education pedagogies and the possibilities for writing that could be conceptualized through visual culture studies. To explore this issue, a qualitative, interpretive case study of students’ writing in the Criticizing Television course will look at the ways in which students’ lifeworld discourses in relationship to the phenomenon of television intersect with academic discourses in their written critical expressions. The proposed case study locates its beginning against and among emergent, entwined questions about student writing in contemporary art education: 1. What are the criteria for quality student writing in art education today? 2. What theories and practices are presently shaping objectives for student criticism writing in art education? 3. What are the relationships among art writing, criticism writing, and visual culture studies in art education? 4. How might students’ written critical responses to visual culture in an art education course position and shape their subjectivities? 5. How do students reconcile the knowledge construction objectives of visual culture academic discourse with the identity construction discourses of their lifeworld when writing about visual culture’s deeply personal and ubiquitous presence in their lives?