Digital networks, mobile computing, and software in our day-to-day lives has created a more technologically engaged world. While this is a global phenomenon, engaging digital technologies is uneven due to resources and accessibility. This presentation focuses on how digital technologies are being learned in art education at a global scale or reflects on the theoretical and practical implications of asking what is global media arts? We use the term media arts to define a set of artistic practices that use electronic, especially digital, forms of technologies as artistic materials and processes for creative meaningful expression (National Endowment for the Arts).

 

Research in the past 15 years shows that K-12 art teachers in schools and students being prepared to be art teachers generally resist learning about and teaching new media art (Delacruz, 2004, Lu, 2005). Patton & Buffington (2016) looked at technology courses in art teacher certification programs in various parts of the United States. An analysis of course descriptions from 26 art education programs identified three types of technology-based art education courses: studio focused, instructional technology, and courses blending studio and instructional technology. With the creation of K-12 media arts standards separate from the visual arts, there is little incentive for K-12 art programs to incorporate new media content into their classrooms. This combination, lack of prepared teachers and isolation of the media arts from general art curricula, creates a gap whereby few students leave high school with sufficient media arts knowledge.

Considering curricula from across the spectrum of K-16 offered the SNAAP survey (2015), there is a philosophical and curricular gap for media arts in curricula. This proposal presents early efforts to understand impacts of new media growth on diverse populations, societies, and cultures by building a global research agenda to understand and create knowledge about the global media arts.