Influences on preservice teachers’ attitudes to ICT integration in and through visual arts education: A search for a creative synthesis
Creators: name: Culpan, Ariadna
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024

description: The study examined the phenomenon of information communication technology in education with specific reference to the influences on preservice teachers’ attitudes to ICT integration in visual arts education courses. The study aligns with the overarching theme within the national and international discourse urging art educators to develop their own technological-pedagogical acumen and to promote preservice teachers’ attitudes to ICT integration both within the university-based visual arts education courses and their work as graduate teachers. <br><br>The research design encompassed a qualitative practitioner-based model set within the researcher’s visual arts education courses at RMIT University School of Education. This involved bringing practice and research together through an exploration of the practical and pedagogical factors central to establishing an ICT inclusive visual arts education context. Central to this process was the facilitation of preservice teachers’ opportunities to: (1) Collaboratively generate the technical and conceptual skills needed for forming informed decisions about ICT use within the immediate visual arts education context and their respective school settings. (2) ‘Voice’ the influences on their perceptions of ICT integration, including the challenges, limitations and possibilities they encountered. The research is in line with the increased momentum in professional renewal in teacher education and the ICT related recommendations within the Australian Council of Deans of Education, New Learning Framework, and the RMIT University School of Education Plan for promoting ICT competencies within all discipline areas. <br><br>The study encompassed three interrelated inquiry phases that preceded the main study and followed a literature search within the fields of the education, visual arts education and the early phases of computer art. The first was the groundwork involving conversations with art teachers, educators and artists within the researcher’s professional network. The second used the researcher’s visual arts practice as a framework for synthesizing traditional art skills and materials and previously untested digital media. The third centred on establishing ICT resources within the visual arts education teaching space and reshaping the long-standing visual art education courses into ICT inclusive constructs. <br><br>The main component of the study sought to gain insight into the factors that shape preservice teachers’ attitudes to ICT integration both within the visual arts courses, and in their professional practice classrooms. In all 107 preservice teachers participated in one, two or all of the following ways: Responding to a questionnaire; participating in interviews; permitting aspects of their visual arts journals and artefacts to be included in the research data. <br><br>The research highlights the importance of preservice teachers having explicit opportunities to collaboratively generate informed attitudes to ICT integration through exploration in combining ICT and traditional art media. The most consistent issues for ongoing investigation relate to: (1) Time constraints and inequity of access to resources. (2) Minimal opportunities for preservice teachers to observe ICT integration, or to test their own ideas in professional practice school art classrooms. Notwithstanding these limitations the methodological contribution of the study is the establishment of a formative framework for building successively deeper levels of ICT integration and creative practice in the preservice teacher visual arts education courses.