iDiscover - the transforming of an analogue art teacher in a digital classroom

Abstract

This interpretive inquiry takes place within the field of Human Science Research in Art Education. It addresses the place that digital technology is claiming in schools in the new years of the 21st century. Through tracing the learning journey of an art and photography teacher whose artistic teaching life has been expressed through analogical theory and method, and who comes to terms with both the seductive quality of digital technology and its power to deeply engage and reward students and teachers, the inquiry aims to gain deep understandings of the ways art teachers and educators might meet the challenges posed by digital technology as it metamorphoses in the art classroom.The inquiry is re-presented as a personal narrative of this art educator’s experiences during one year with Year 11 and 12 students in an all girls’ school. The narrative reveals an understanding of her pedagogical practices about which she has been previously unclear as the inquiry interprets the practical and theoretical work of her students and reveals some habits of thinking that students adopt and develop as the year progresses. The teacher’s design is to work in synergy with her students toward exhibiting her own collection of images.As the narrative unfolds, questions about pedagogical practice and the theory of art teaching mature until finally the teacher, as the main protagonist of the narrative, conceives of the significance of her inquiry for other art educators: were they also to inquire, research, and develop narrative that occurs in multi-media equipped classrooms, they too might enrich their own and their students’ experience of art making using digital technology.