Art education and new media : understanding the roles of artists and educators in the age of immediacy

This thesis is an act of inquiry into the entangled relationship between new media and art and how art education should re-position itself towards the cultural, political, and social shifts brought on by new media. By positioning new media as an entity yet-to-be-understood, I drew upon Marshall McLuhan’s writings as well as diverse and intersecting views of new media from debates and discussions occurring in multiple fields of studies. These are offered in the hopes of providing various spaces in which we may think about what art and art education is and can be as well as to expose the complexity behind thinking about the relationships among the following terms: contemporary, new, media, art, and education. Questions raised in this study do not stem from a mode of resistance nor celebration, but rather from the positions of being an educator, an artist, and a researcher who seeks to critically and reflexively examine and make sense of her role and that of others in this creative ecology. Toward the end of this journey, it became more evident that new media indeed needs to be embraced and its potentials recognized if art education is to revitalize its curricula and pedagogies. However, to do so, I argue that we must approach new media through art first and foremost, and then new media, focusing on cultivating an environment within which new media is approached and understood from the perspective of artists.Education, Faculty ofCurriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department ofGraduat