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Introduction – Outline of Project: (388 words)
Rationale
This research project will centre around the art and design education in second level schools. It aims to increase students’ awareness of the benefits and dangers of the increased dependency on technology and its role in their lives. The main junior cycle key skills that will be engaged with are:

1. Managing information
and thinking: “ability to use digital technology to access manage and share content” students will develop skills that help them navigate the digital world.

2. Being numerate:
“develop a positive disposition towards investigating reasoning and problem solving”. Students will look at how they interact with technology and will develop an interest into discovering how digital technology can present itself in both physical and intangible forms.
3. Staying well: “safe and ethical use of digital technology” learning how to protect and respect personal privacy online. (NCCA, 2014) The junior cycle learning outcomes that students will aim to fulfil are 1.15 “critique the use of media in their own and others work”, and 1.9 “debate the value that they and a society place on an artwork” among others. (JCT, n.d)

History and Activism. .
Visual art education at Junior cycle aims to develop students critical thinking skills. This research proposal aims to prompt debate and critical thought about how humanity’s relationship with technology has changed over time. I consider this research question important as it brings attention to the exponential growth of reliance in technology in the world we live in greatly advanced during the covid 19 pandemic. Owens (2024) states that in 2024, businesses will increasingly employ new digital technologies to enhance production. This rate will increase by 8% between 2023 and 2024.(Owens 2024) Students will question the benefits and dangers of this digital age, comparing the origins of shared information such as the printing press and zines, to the fast-paced virtual world of today.

My own experience:

In my current interdisciplinary work, I am investigating the process of logging and recording elements of everyday life. Technology plays a large part in this ritual of logging and categorizing to the point where it has become a habit to store all data virtually.Young people have grown up in a world where technology is integrated into nearly every aspect of their lives, and I am interested in exploring the results of embracing this in the art classroom.

Core Research Question:
What is the merit of a project directed to junior cycle students, that aims to address the role digital technology plays in our lives by introducing students to the creation of art aided by technology, while fulfilling the aims of the visual art curriculum?

Research Aims: (bullet point 3-4 aims)
State clearly what you aim to find out through your research.
- I aim to survey established teachers, and members of the school IT department. To gain insight and opinions into developing and delivering challenging projects within the visual art curriculum. I hope to gain knowledge about any changes observed in students relationship with digital media over their careers, and experience their point of view on digital medias place within the creation of art in the art room.
- I aim to develop a rich, well-informed unit of learning for junior cycle visual arts students exploring the role of technology in their lives through use of not only traditional mediums but also non-traditional mediums such as augmented reality and digital editing.
- I aim produce a research report that presents my findings on humanities relationship with technology and digital media as part of my professional portfolio.

Review of Literature: (1068 words)
Introduction
This literature review aims to identify within a series of current literature the importance of technology within the art classroom. I will first approach address this using core texts focusing on critical thinking as a skill that will help students to stay safe when navigating the many aspects of digital technology, and the digital culture this technology has created. I will subsequently discuss technology in relation to art education specifically.

 

Kerry freedman, Teaching visual culture: Curriculum, aesthetics, and the social life of art. Teachers College Press. 2003.Within this text Kerry Freedman speaks at length about the presence of visual culture in the art classroom. She defines visual culture as including: “The fine arts, tribal arts, advertising, popular film and video, folk art, television and other performance, housing and apparel design, computer game and toy design, and other forms of visual production and communication.” (Freedman 2003 pg 2) In would argue that in today’s world the existence of visual culture is greatly dependant on forms of media such as Tik Tok, Instagram, YouTube etc. These digital platforms create whole new languages and contexts surrounding the world students are a part of. To embrace these platforms as a means of art education would be an exciting and fresh way to engage students in learning.“Addressing issues of visual culture in school requires an understanding of the daily visual experiences of students. That means that curriculum must keep up with changes in the visual world”(Freedman 2003, p126) I believe that integrating these forms of visual culture into the way students learn about art will enhance further understanding of the society in which the art exists., Freedman writes “visual culture is one of the ways we are connected to our fellow human beings” p68. This has never been truer than it is today, over 20 years after this article was published. The new world of technology and the blurred boundaries of culture have made popular culture increasingly pedagogical (Giroux & Simon, 1989).Within recent years new spaces have emerged as sources of this visual culture, virtual and augmented reality have become increasingly popular and their inevitable integration into the classroom would be a great advancement of learning and creativity. Freedman urges for art educators to analyse objects and images using methods that “may not be typically seen in schools”(p124).Freedman summarises that platforms such as these allow students to not only respond to visual culture but contribute to its creation. (pg 139).

 

Hickman: Why We Make Art: And Why It Is Taught (2010) Hickman investigated the nature of art education, the human urge to make art and the nature of creativity. He defends its inclusion in the curriculum as a crucial part of a child’s development. Hickman introduces the reader to Arthur Efland’s three “streams of influence” surrounding approaches to art education, expressionist, scientific rationalist and reconstructivist. The expressionist approach focuses on the “individual growth” of the artist and the use of imagination. The scientific rationalists claim art its own method of investigation and facilitates a “particular way of knowing” (p45). Finally, a reconstructivist approach sees art as a tool for social change and a means of disrupting the norm (p.46) In relation to Art, Hickman claims there is a move away from creating art as a means of understanding oneself, and instead a focus on understanding the world through art. (P.94) Embracing the latter two approaches described by Efland above, abandoning the more individual centred “expressionist” approach to the creation of art that fosters “individuals self-esteem and sense of identity” (p57). I would argue that these approaches are not mutually exclusive. To understand the world through art the student should first have to examine their place within it. When looking into the presence of technology, students will start by examining this in their own life, investigating ways to visually represent their internet usage or recreating digital worlds, before then looking at how our relationship with technology effects society, discussing dangers and possible change to be implemented to create a safer digital world. “There is great potential for art to contribute to a wider school curriculum- not only basic skills of reading writing, listening measuring and use of information technology but in a significant way to thinking skills” (p 42)Michelle Tillander. Creativity, technology, art, and pedagogical practices. Art Education, (2011) Tillander discusses the success of technology integrated into the art room. She shares concepts that were generated by high school students such as “old technologies as precursors to new technology” in response to the consideration of new media. (Tillander, 2011 p42). Pedagogical benefits involve the transformation of technology as a passive tool in education to a “source of active engagement” (p45). New media offers students the opportunity to explore the modern and reconnect to the past. Technology cannot be “created or consumed in isolation from older media or in an isolated cultural context” (Bolter & Grusin, 2000). To summarise, a focus on modern digital media would in turn lead to the exploration of historical methods of sharing information and data.

Jennie Guy: Curriculum: Contemporary Art Goes to School (2020)
In Jennie Guy’s 2020 book “Curriculum”, she considers the merit of introducing contemporary art to primary and second level education, Guy compiled this collection of essays in response to a growing desire for a “rethinking of art education on all levels” (Guy ,2020). Her projects aim to stimulate students’ creativity in original and innovative ways. Bringing contemporary ideas and projects to the classroom, challenging students preconceived ideas of what can be classified as art. There has been much discussion about the increasing role that technology plays in the art world, due to the rise in popularity of Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated “art”. With the introduction of AI to the art world “theoretical and practical understandings of art become challenged” ( Cetinic and She, 2022). Allowing students to consider these ideas through introducing non-traditional, digital means of creating art, can facilitate this contemporary thinking and social engagement that Guy discusses.

Conclusion
To conclude, the above texts have outlined some of the benefits of embracing technology and integrating digital media as both a method of creating art and a tool in conceptual development that embraces contemporary thinking. Awareness of technology allows students to think critically about modern society and resources. The possibility for further research into specific methods of implementing this change has seen made clear to me through this review of literature.
Research Methodology: (276 words)
1. Introduce the rationale and assumptions underpinning survey research methodology
Cohen et.al (2007) describes the function of surveys as “gathering data about the nature ofexisting conditions” at a set time . Surveys research can be carried out in a number of forms. For example through in person interviews, questionnaires or telephone surveys. Surveys collect data on a once off occasion from a sample of respondents. The data collected is standardized as each respondent receives the same questions (p206). Two types of data will be gathered, quantitative data and qualitive data (Cohen et.al, 2007). Gleo et. al(2008) defines the purpose of quantitative research as “counting occurrences, volume or the size of the associations between entities”, and subsequently describes qualitative research as aiming to “provide rich or thick descriptive accounts of the phenomenon under investigation, (p268).

2. Justify why this methodological approach is suitable to address your research question in the context of educational research.
My survey will be conducted in the form of a questionnaire. I will be using a mixed method approach to collecting data combining the complementary strengths of both quantitative and qualitive data (Gleo et.al, 2008). This will gather numerical and non- numerical data from the survey sample. This method of data collection will be suitable for my educational research question as it will provide wide range of data in a variety of forms. The form of survey I will be using will be exploratory, meaning no assumptions are perpetuated and patterns are explored when viewing responses. (Cohen et.al, 2007). The sample population that will respond to my questionnaire will consist of established teachers, and school IT faculty members. To address the topic of digital media awareness and usage, responses will be anonymous prompting honesty and authenticity when responding.

Data Collection Method: (305 words)
The method of data collection I will be using is questionnaires, I hope to gather responses from teachers and faculty of the school IT department. Form these responses I hope to glean an insight into the role technology and digital media play in school culture.
Strengths: self-administered questionnaires without the presence of the researcher, The absence of the researcher is what I consider one of the main strengths of a questionnaire survey. This allows the respondent to answer the questionnaire in private and at their own pace without the pressure of being observed by the researcher. This in turn may wield a more honest response to questions asked (Cohen et al 2007 p344). This method also creates an element of anonymity, that will as some respondents may be hesitant to reply truthfully about lack of knowledge surrounding digital media if they are identifiable.

Limitations: pitfalls of question writing
A major limitation of questionnaire is the possibility of miscommunication through use of ambiguous or unclear questions (Cohen et.al 2007 p335). As mentioned above, a characteristic of questionnaires is that the researcher is not present when the respondent is answering the survey. As a result however, there is no opportunity for the respondent to ask questions or seek clarification about poorly written questions. A well written questionnaire requires the questions asked of respondents to be unambiguous, simple and short (Cohen et.al 2007 p336). To prevent the possibility of unclear questions, the questionnaire will be piloted before it is administered. A pilot study is a test or trial run of a particular research tool. (Van Teijlingen, et. al, 2002). Carrying out a pilot study of aquestionnaire can identify redundant or easily misunderstood questions and contributes to overall readability of the questionnaire. Therefore, I believe that the strengths of this research method are stronger than its limitations.

 

Data Analysis Methods: (313 words)
A) To analyse the data collected from my questionnaires I will conduct iterative cycles of thematic analysis, which enables an inductive approach to analysing quantitative and qualitative data to generate emergent themes. Thematic Analysis refers to the “systematic coding and categorizing” of large amounts of text-based responses (Vaismoradi et.al, 2013). This approach allows the researcher to identify themes and patterns of words used within the data collected. Braun et. al (2006) describes thematic analysis as providing a “purely qualitative, detailed and nuanced account of data.” (Braun et.al, 2006). This form of analysis requires a constant moving backward and forwards over the entire data set collected. The six stages of thematic analysis outlined in Braun et.al (2006) are as follows:
1. Familiarisation with the data: the researcher reads through data and notes initial ideas.
2. Generating initial codes: Note interesting features systematically across entire data set and record. Considering all responses equally.
3. Searching for themes: the researcher will use the codes generated in the previous stage, considering similarities between codes which will then be sorted into themes.
4. Reviewing themes: At this stage it should become clear what story the data is going to tell. the creation of a thematic map can aid the reviewing of themes
5. Defining an naming themes: The themes in the data become more coherent through refining and clear names are generated.
6. Producing the report: in this final stage findings are compiled and presented. (Braun et.al 2006, p87-92)

B) I will also triangulate data sources to ensure validity and reliability of my findings. Triangulation can be described as the use of multiple methods or data sources in order to “achieve a comprehensive understanding of phenomenon” (Carter et.al 2014). In the context of my research survey, the individual responses from the questionnaire will be compared against the rest of the data set and presented in a research report.

Reference List
• Bolter, J.D. and Grusin, R., 2000. Remediation: Understanding new media. mit
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• Braun, V. and Clarke, V., 2006. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative
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• Hickman, R., 2010. Why we make art: And why it is taught.
• JCT (no date) Junior Cycle Visual art learning outcomes , Visual Art | Resources |
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https://www.jct.ie/visual_art/resources (Accessed: 28 April 2024).
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https://ncca.ie/media/2115/key_skills_2014.pdf (Accessed: 28 April 2024).
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• Owens, T. (2024) Topic: Tech trends 2024, Statista. Available at:
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April 2024).