In this project, bachelor arts education students and senior researchers conducted collaborative research on digital learning environments in the context of arts education. The aim of the study is to look for new relationships to working in digital environments. The students involved in the research project have completed a part of their education with the use of digital learning environments because of corona. Being now in their final year, they currently undertake their training in the physical studios of our university of applied sciences.

Research question:

What new relationships to educational digitalisation, which transcend a purely functional approach, can we discover together with students in arts education during artistic collective digital workshops and thereby

inspire and challenge students to think and act differently about the digital dimension in arts educational practice?

Conceptual or theoretical framework:

Rationale and project objective

Following the corona crisis, education has been engulfed by a wave of digitalisation since March 2020. Under pressure by the circumstances, efficiency and functionality had to be achieved and teachers were forced en masse to add a digital alternative to their lessons. Digital resources were tools to achieve set goals. Due to the external pressure, there was neither time nor space for fundamental reflection on the meaningful use of digital resources in education. This project aims to make time and space for this in-depth reflection. Together with students in arts education, we look for new relationships between education and digitality that (a) transcend pure functionality and that (b) can do justice to the subject-didactic uniqueness at stake in being a teacher. The underlying hypothesis is that other relationships are possible than the standard relationships to which one was obliged by the situation and which could be considered by automatism as the only possible relationship.

Through the diversions of art

Art plays a central role in this research. Art eminently searches for new relationships to reality and, in the meantime, has previously and more thoroughly searched for forms of digitality that go beyond a mere application of usual classical forms of digital tools. The innovative approach of this project is that, for this research, we draw inspiration from the way in which art has studied the question of functionality in education on the one hand and functionality of the digital on the other.

Project design

The project design foresees for the organisation of different artistic collective digital workshops. Each workshop has a focus of arts as a studio practice. At stake is the search for new relationships between education and digitalisation. During the digital workshops, we collected rich qualitative data through (digital) participatory observation. We will process this ethnographic data through mappings and the creation of narratives (ethnofiction).

Currently, we are in the second project year. Last year, we set up several digital practices in the context of arts education. We combined this with literature reviews. Artworks were also often used as sources. At the end of the first project year, we designed a didactic framework, from which digital art education workshops could be developed. This framework gave rise to the digital art education practices we set up this year.

European dimension:

The use of digital learning environments is not only an issue in Belgium, but in many (European) countries. We want to question the efficient approaches in this project. In European (arts) education, a frequently asked question is how education in a digital environment can have a more explorative, searching and collective character.

This study combined several research methods. Ethnography plays the most important role. In addition, the senior researchers also conducted literature reviews. 1. literature review (2021-2022) In this first phase, a framework was developed for (open) guidance of the workshops. Based on a literature study and brainstorming sessions within the research team, we examined how, through concrete actions, collective 'digital spaces' with the desired properties could be created. 2. digital ethnography (2022-2023) Roll out different digital workshops; in which we collect qualitative data through participatory observation. In this phase, the studio spaces prepared by research method 1 took place. During the workshops, ethnographic data were collected by the students and researchers. In terms of conducting ethnographic research in an arts education context, interesting things have happened throughout this project. The three senior researchers involved have extensive experience in ethnographic research. This experience took place in physical, educational contexts. The students were introduced in ethnography. The handbook 'Becoming an educational ethnographer', edited by Sancho-Gill and Hernandez-Hernandez (2021), was used as a guide. Soon, students started looking for interesting ways to engage ethnographically in digital environments. The identity of the students involved showed great skill in dealing with digital media. With different communities, we engaged digitally in this project. In each case, students engaged with fellow students from the arts education program. The senior researchers worked with students and with teacher groups from the field. In each case, the researchers had been part of the chosen communities for some time; they became at home in them. This approach allowed us to come home to a community as an ethnographic researcher. Each time, the researchers opted for participatory observation. The journey we have taken with each community is rather short. Because of that, the research method could be described as short term theoretically informed ethnography, as described by Pink and Morgan (2013). “…it both maintains the first hand involvement of the ethnographer as a core element in the way that she or he comes to know about other people’s lives and experiences, takes a more deliberate and interventional approach to that of long-term participant observation and is also theoretically engaged. … However, our point is that if this is what we are seeking to understand, it is useful to go beyond observation to create short-term research engagements that benefit from the production of forms of intensity, empathy and an ongoing ethnographic-analytical-theoretical dialog.” (p. 353)

The technical aspects of the online platforms proved to be very recalcitrant during the collective workshops. Getting beyond this was not easy. With the various workshop, we succeeded, but it was no easy task. The urgency behind the project depends on contextual factors over time. The project was born in the corona period. At that time, there was a great hunger to work with arts education from an online didactic uniqueness. Meanwhile, the physical art studios in our school are open again. When students then work digitally, The digital environments are only used as quick communications outside school moments (e.g. what props should we bring for a rehearsal tomorrow). The efficient approach of the existing tools then seems to be sufficient. The shared collaboration between senior researchers and arts students made for an interesting trajectory. Thus, the methodology of ethnography was challenged, because students collected the diary fragments in other ways (vlogs, audiovisual processing...). This provided a new approach to methodology. There were also challenges. The students were involved for 1 academic year. The senior researchers work on the project for 3 years. This also calls for alignment.

Biesta, G. (2020). Educational research: An unorthodox introduction. London: Bloomsbury Publishers. Meirieu, P. (2020, May 2). Philippe Meirieu: “Laten we stoppen met het totemiseren van digitale technologie”. Retrieved from Oproep voor een democratische school: https://www.skolo.org/nl/2020/05/02/philippe-meirieu-laten-we-stoppen-met-het totemiseren-van-digitale-technologie/ Pink, S., & Morgan, J. (2013). Short-Term Ethnography: Intense Routesto Knowing. Symbolic Interaction, 351-361. Sancho-Gil, J. M., & Hernandez-Hernandez, F. (2021). Becoming an educational ethnographer - The challanges and Opportunities of Undertaking Research. Abingdon/New York: Routledge.