Date of Award
Fall 10-18-2022
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education in Instructional Technology
Department
Instructional Technology
Committee Chair
Dr. Tiffany Roman
Committee Chair/First Advisor
Dr. Iván Jorrín-Abellán
Second Committee Member
Dr. April Munson
Abstract
This phenomenographic study was conducted to investigate the perceptions of high school visual arts teachers on their experiences with digital art. It was conducted in the context of a growing creative industry in Georgia including professions that rely on technology to utilize and create digital art. The perceptions of seven high school visual arts teachers with varying experiences from two districts in Georgia were gathered using in-depth semi-structured interviews. The data collected from these interviews were interpreted to generate an outcome space that represented the voices of this group of participants. The outcome space of this study was arranged in a hierarchical order that reflected a central idea in which high school art teachers perceived that digital art is an important medium to be included alongside other more traditional mediums in high school art instruction. Other supporting categories of description within the outcome space under the primary outcome included (a) perceived deficiencies in preservice preparation and professional development for the purposes of teaching digital art, (b) perceived preparedness to learn new skills due to an art mindset instilled by preservice training, (c) perceived barriers to digital art instruction in the high school art class, and (d) perceived solutions to these barriers. It was concluded that changes could be made in policies such as school funding, curriculum, and professional development to encourage the teaching of digital art as an additional medium within the high school art class to prepare students for careers that increasingly rely on digital art as a medium.