A brief paper outlining and framing Media Arts Education as a national effort and providing an overview of its current status in U.S education and potential for benefits to learners, communities and the educational system. It outlines a set of prioritized strategies and tasks in order to achieve our Vision and Mission - “access to high quality, standards-based MAE for all learners”. The paper is to be disseminated (e.g. website) and tailored to specific purposes (presentation, toolkit) of information, promotion, advocacy and the solicitation of resources, partners, supporters, members of our nascent organization (e.g. media arts educators, SEADAE, NAMAE, EPIC Games).
We are nearing the completion of our work:
NATIONAL MEDIA ARTS EDUCATION INITIATIVE
Media Arts Committee,
National Coalition for Core Arts Standards
Preface
This document is intended to frame and initiate establishment of media arts education (MAE) as a national effort. It provides an overview of its current status in U.S. education and its potentials and benefits for learners, communities, and the educational system. It presents MAE’s historical and present status and a set of prioritized strategies and tasks in order to achieve MAE’s vision and mission, where “all learners have sustainable and equitable access to high quality, standards-based media arts education”.
Media Arts and Media Arts Education
We live in a world increasingly infused with and interconnected through media arts. Media arts, defined as technology-based creative production and design and including the diverse forms of photo, video, sound, animation, graphics, social media, interactive and virtual design, is fundamental to how we experience, comprehend, and interact with our world. Ninety percent of Americans gather their information and learn from the media-based internet, and for eighty percent it is their primary source for news (Hitlin, 2018). Screens and devices streaming internet content are essentially media arts interfaces and production platforms, with expanding capacities for people to access, create, and share media. Younger generations are constantly interacting with this emerging virtualized world. Students' screen time is ever-increasing, and two-thirds of students that are online have produced and posted some form of content (Lenhart, 2007, Common Sense Media, 2015). These prevelant forms and capacities are not adequately reflected in the current educational curricula.
It is imperative that these vital forms of communication, production, design, and literacy become standard, high-quality offerings in schools and other educational settings. These offerings are important for students to gain critical literacies in multimedia languages, products, and experiences as well as to skillfully wield them for their own creative expression, academic development, social and emotional growth, technical proficiency and career preparation. All learners should have equitable access to high-quality, standards-based media arts education to gain proficiency in creating, producing, analyzing, responding to, and connecting through media arts. Media arts education proffers great benefits for students, schools, and communities and should be rapidly scaled up and established nationwide to meet the needs of our current and projected societal trends.
VISION STATEMENT: We envision a world where all learners have equitable access to the emergent power and potential of media arts.
As a result of engaging in media arts education:
o Children have knowledge and skills to read and create media effectively.
o Children are ready for future careers.
o Children are more likely to be civically engaged.
o Children gain comprehensive 21st century academic and workforce competencies, including:
▪ Creativity, communication, collaboration, critical thinking
▪ Design thinking, interdisciplinary integration, computational thinking
▪ Media/tech/digital literacies, civic engagement, cultural agency
▪ Project-based learning, project management, media production
The possibilities and potentials resulting from the full implementation of media arts education, as defined by this Initiative, include:
o Creatively unlimited virtual laboratories and tools for all students across the educational ecosystem.
o A democratizing and accessible art form that reflects contemporary ideas, capacities and culture.
o Increased student engagement, self-directedness, and cultural empowerment
o Increased alternative access for all students (e.g. Special Education, English Language Development) to other core academic content and processes
o A hub discipline for transdisciplinary learning (e.g. STEAM, arts integration)
o Increased vitalizing connections between students, schools and communities
o Educational adaptations towards 21st century societal and workforce conditions
A Brief History of Media Arts Education
Since the early nineties, high schools have offered MAE courses in photography, filmmaking, video production and digital imaging, usually under the visual arts category and credential. This instruction has been largely ad hoc and DIY, depending on the ingenuity of individual educators who secured funding and resources, developed programs and curricula, trained themselves in complex classroom management, instruction, and assessment, and maintained evolving equipment and software. This innovative, sporadic development has, to a limited degree, continued to adapt to new technologies, methods, and productions reflecting diverse media arts forms, such as 3D design, 3D printing, virtual design, and game design.
As accessibility to digital media devices, the internet, and social media have increased, media arts has become a dominant cultural force. A variety of teachers, from English language arts to history and computer science, have accessed media arts as a teaching tool. As a result of the 2020 pandemic and subsequent “distance learning”, teachers at elementary and secondary levels have become versed in the basics of multimedia production and presentation for themselves and their students.
Despite a decades-long presence in schools and its cultural ubiquity, MAE is still relatively unfamiliar to many educators, schools, and other government agencies. It is not yet widely recognized as a formal and distinct arts discipline, despite its inclusion in the 2014 National Core Arts Standards. No states have fully established MAE on par with other arts disciplines and subject areas; full establishment would include distinct categorical structures in courses, credentials, credits, and funding. There are no specific post-secondary programs that train educators to teach media arts. Media arts educators are not often hired specifically for their specialized capabilities or for the inherent educational possibilities of the discipline described here.
MAE found some institutional footholds in the beginning of this century. It was formally established first in Minnesota in the early nineties with its own standards and curricula, albeit within the state arts school program and limited student numbers. South Carolina developed standards for media arts in 2010. Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) had a vital Media Arts Initiative from 2004-2008, which developed district standards, 8 regional Demonstration Media Arts Classrooms, and robust curricula across all media arts forms.
National Media Arts Standards
In June of 2014, the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) published the first set of National Media Arts Standards. This established MAE’s independence from dance, music, theatre, and visual arts and supported MAE’s formalized presence in the national K-12 education system. As of this writing, 26 states have adopted or adapted Media Arts Standards.
Due to the lack of a formal organization for MAE, NCCAS formed a Media Arts Committee (MAC) to oversee the writing of the 2014 standards. MAC, comprised of arts educators and practitioners representing various related backgrounds and organizations, has continued and expanded its efforts to serve MAE since publication of the standards. In the quest to understand needs, determine definitions, and build infrastructure for the emerging MAE field, MAC began a study to determine who needed to be served and with what types of services and supports in order to shape a vision and mission for MAE, as described in this document.
MAE requires structures currently available to other arts disciplines in order to effectively support districts, educators and students. Necessary supports include:
o Media arts teacher preparation programs in postsecondary education institutions
o Media arts teacher certification pathways
o Media arts professional organization support for educators
o Media arts represented in federal, state, and/or local education policy and funding mechanisms
o Media arts organizations in every community, linking teaching artists with schools
Promising Case Study Examples
There is no mechanism for gathering MAE’s detailed status in various states; media arts has not been included in state-level data reporting, and it is also not part of federal data initiatives. In lieu of data, the authors offer the following case studies as two examples of state efforts in MAE.
In Pennsylvania, the grassroots organization Media Arts Coalition of Educators (MACE), under the guidance of NCCAS and with the support of the PA Department of Education, began offering professional development opportunities for media arts educators. The organizers found that educators from multiple disciplines were searching for the same answers to the question “Where can I connect with media arts educators like me and find resources to help me with my instruction?” This question underscores the need to form a professional media arts education association that networks teachers across the country.
California has a globally-renowned, robust media arts- oriented creative economy” of $260 billion (OTIS 2020). Nevertheless, MAE has not had a representational presence within K-12 schools. In the late 1990’s multiple efforts by outside organizations began seeding a variety of curricula and school programs, primarily within LAUSD. CA’s Career Technical Educational programs under the Arts Media and Entertainment pathways have flourished, to date serving 231,000 students. LAUSD had a Media Arts K-12 Initiative from 2006-2010, resulting in its own board-adopted standards and institutional support for instruction and professional development for 150 media arts teachers. Due to strong community advocacy, CA now has its own media arts standards and framework and is on the verge of organizing its statewide educator network.
Challenges
Despite its widespread cultural presence and decades-long presence in schools, MAE is a newly-designated arts discipline without system-wide recognition and support. As with other arts disciplines, It is an elective subject with voluntary national standards. It is not meeting its full promise as a transdisciplinary hub that could serve as a connector between other disciplines and students’ academic and career success. This presents a number of endemic challenges for this new arts discipline to attain full institutional establishment and its greatest potential for learners and schools:
● Media arts is not widely or readily recognized in education.
● There is little self-identifying cultural constituency as with other arts - dance, music, theatre, and visual arts.
● There is a lack of internal institutional promotion. MAE requires deliberate, consistent, persistent and informed external efforts to initiate media arts-specific staffing, program development, and educational support structures, such as credentials, course titles, and resource assignment within classrooms, schools, districts, and states.
● MAE is diffuse; it is currently taught by a wide variety of teachers under diverse titles and circumstances who may or may not identify themselves as media arts teachers.
● MAE requires specialized knowledge and skill sets across pedagogy, media production, technologies, facilities, fundraising, classroom management, programming and community connections.
● Higher education and K-12 training, credentialing, and professional development programs are absent from most communities.
MISSION STATEMENT
Connecting people and creating systems to advance and sustain quality media arts education for all learners.
In order to meet these challenges and to attain its promise and potential for learners, it is critical to establish a robust system of research, development, support, and promotion for media arts education. The NCCAS Media Arts Committee has developed this document for wide dissemination in order to make clear the needs and to launch a national call to action - the National Media Arts Education Initiative (NMAEI). This document is intended to inform the nascent MAE support community across all sectors and invite participation and support for the formation of a national organization which will function to provide a robust system of research, development and promotion of media arts education coupled with support for media arts educators. We invite you to join us in the effort to implement a National Media Arts Education Initiative.
The National Media Arts Education Initiative
Organizational - MAC will launch this Initiative towards the subsequent formation of a national organization, the National Association for Media Arts Education (NAMAE), which would eventually supersede MAC’s representational role within the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards.
Policy - Support for any and all governmental policies and support structures which would serve MAE’s full, robust and sustainable establishment
Promotion - MAE requires robust branding, marketing, information distribution, and community engagement to communicate and educate about the benefits of media arts learning.
Research - MAE requires research into its own current status across states and internationally, its own arts discipline as a cultural and global presence, and its possibilities and practicalities for the benefits of learning and creativity across education. The Arts Education Partnership’s ArtsEdSearch database can serve as a repository for future research.
Resources - The NMAEI needs to immediately acquire robust fiscal, organizational, and human resources in order to scale up the Initiative, NAMAE and state affiliates, and the discipline’s presence within schools and communities.
Networking - The nascent and widespread MAE community, including individuals and organizations across diverse sectors holds the knowledge and connections that we need to move this work forward.
Professional Development and Support - Media arts educators at all levels and across different settings, e.g. K-12 educators, higher education programs, and teaching artists, need support, connection, and training to share and improve their practices and promote their programs
What Can I Do?
1. Go to our website to learn more about our organizational efforts:WEBSITE URL. On the website you can:
a. Fill out the information about yourself and/or your organization.
b. Sign up to participate or contribute to any of the above efforts
c. View the Calendar to see when and where the next event is.
d. Join the email list-serve and coalition networking site
e. Watch the website and social media for future developments.
Resources
o ArtsEdSearch media arts studies
o National Media Arts Standards
o Media Arts Model Cornerstone Assessments
