Four approaches to implementing digital media in art education

Abstract

This article is included in a research project called Skolämnesparadigm och undervisningspraktik i skärmkulturen – bild, musik och svenska [“School subject paradigm and teaching practice in the screen culture – art, music and Swedish”]. Due to digital changes in the media world of pictures and art, digital media are implemented in the Swedish school subject “bild”, art in English-speaking countries, in secondary school. The school subject bild is seen as conforming to a school subject paradigm. It is supposed to meet another paradigm, ICT and digital media, with its values and expectancies. What happens if a traditional art subject paradigm, with the idea of the relevance of manual expression of self and of traditional techniques, meets digital media? Four different approaches to the implementation of digital media in the subject of art are discussed: resistance, add-on, embeddedness and digital media as dominant. The main focus is what is happening to the core of the subject, called the sacred, and what really is the core and sacred of the subject. Also discussed is what we call the profane of the subject, which may be expelled, and the relationship between the sacred and profane. Is digitalisation the future of the art subject or is it a way of leaving the art subject the way we are used to thinking of it?We are using empirical studies in nine schools in Sweden, including observations and interviews with pupils, art teachers and school administrators, that are accounted for in other articles.