Ryan M. Patton

Games as an Artistic Medium: Investigating Complexity Thinking in Game-Based Art Pedagogy

This action research study examines the making of video games, using an integrated development environment software program called GameMaker, as art education curriculum for students between the ages of 8-13. Through a method I designed, students created video games using the concepts of move, avoid, release, and contact (MARC) to explore their understanding of complexity thinking. From this process of making games, students learned systems, deconstructing systems, and reconstructing systems using game-based art pedagogy. The findings of this study indicate that creating games expands the content of making in art education by being inclusive of the personal worlds and lives of students. Using the concept of MARC encourages students to think about the complexity of systems and how they work, identifying meaningful associations between students’ understanding of their worlds and games.

Games That Art Educators Play: Games in the Historical and Cultural Context of Art Education

Games have played an important role in modern educational methodologies. Beginning with the work of luminaries like Froebel, Montessori, and Dewey and continuing through the Cold War, the counter-culture movement of the 1960s and ’70s, and into the present day, shifts in educational practice can be traced historically using the lens of games, where concepts like play, win strategies, cooperation, and engagement figure prominently in curricular structures. The author investigates how games have been discussed in art education literature, linking how the use of games in art educational environments significantly reflects the sociopolitical contexts of the 20th century.

Keeping up with our students: The evolution of technology and standards in art education

ABSTRACT This article addresses the standards of technology in the visual arts, arguing the standards function as de facto policy, the guidelines that shape what teachers teach. In this study, we investigate how art education standards approach technology as a teaching tool and artmaking medium, analyzing the current National Visual Arts Standards, the 21st Century Skills, the National Art Education Association (NAEA) Standards for Art Teacher Preparation, the NAEA Professional Standards for Visual Arts Educators, and how 26 university art education programs teach technology. Because a new set of digital standards were developed as media arts, separate from the visual arts, we believe that media arts should be considered a subset of the larger umbrella of visual arts, seeing visual art educators are the best equipped to address the new digital media arts standards and forms of making. Finally the article makes suggestions about how university art teacher preparation programs can redirect their courses to better relate to contemporary art practices, current educational uses of technology, and the world of ubiquitous computing.

Tech-Savvy Girls: Learning 21st-Century Skills Through STEAM Digital Artmaking

Redefining the educational model of science, technology, engineering, and math curriculum (STEM) to also include art to become STEAM (Fournier, 2013; Guyotte, Sochacka, Constantino, Walther, & Kellam, 2014) is a current method to encourage students to actively participate in 21st-century learning (Saxena, 2014). The skills emphasized for 21st-century learning include critical thinking and problem solving; collaboration and communication; and creativity and innovation (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2007). Encouraging students to pursue a STEM career has become an important U.S. educational policy that emphasizes teaching these 21st-century skills along with STEM knowledge in the discourse of future economic growth.

Posthumanist Movement Art Pedagogy: Geolocative Awareness and Co-Figurative Agency With Mobile Learning

Mobile learning from a posthumanist critical perspective is the co-figuration of learner with geolocative mobile devices that blurs boundaries of the networked body. In this study, four art education researchers explore geolocative co-figurative possibilities of mobile learning. The authors theorize co-figurative agency and heighten awareness of the importance of sociospatial relationships afforded by the current milieu of networked geolocative knowledge to arts pedagogy. Through analysis of case studies of art practice, a new theoretical concept called posthumanist movement art pedagogy is developed to investigate movement as a posthumanist art practice, enacting agency through mobile data co-figuration within spaces of geolocative awareness. Case studies concentrate on mobile new media art utilizing photography, gamification, Global Positioning System drawing, and data collection/broadcasting. Impacts on the field of art and education focus on movement as being co-figured with the body and geolocation data as sites for potential transformation, embodiment, play, and data-identity constructions.

Meaningful Makers: Stuff, Sharing, and Connection in STEAM Curriculum

We found that Dr. Sweeny’s Editorial... touches upon an important resurging social practice... we were surprised to see that the DIY renaissance (commonly referred to as the ‘maker movement’) was not given serious consideration in the dialogue. (p. 5) The maker movement encourages informal teaching and learning of practical technical skills related to electronics, metaland woodworking, and traditional arts and crafts. Clapp and Jimenez continue by saying it would be prudent for the field of art education to reimagine itself in relation to the maker movement to begin an authentic dialogue with this burgeoning field that is capturing the attention of educators, parents, and policy makers, something the arts have been trying to do for decades. Clapp and Jimenez’s maker-centered argument is supported by educational data showing that the massive reduction of arts learning has affected schools, particularly in poorer communities (Parsad & Spiegelman, 2012). in STEAM Curriculum Meaningful Makers: Stuff, Sharing, and Connection