An exemplary unit of instruction designed to introduce secondary students to instructional content about computer art and discipline-based art education

This study provides an exemplary unit of lesson plans that uses a DBAE approach to examine computer art, focusing upon instructional content drawn from the art discipline of aesthetics and aesthetic inquiry strategies that can be used to examine computer art. The aesthetic issue selected for exploration concerns the ontological question, "What is the nature of art—or of computer art?" Inquiry strategies suggested for exploring this issue incorporate aspects of Matthew Lipman's "Philosophy for Children" curriculum, case studies and questions about art posed by Margaret Battin et aL (1989), and exercises suggested by John Hospers (1982). The instructional unit proposed is designed for use by secondary art teachers, and provides an example of how a DBAE approach can be used to encourage students to investigate and respond to a contemporary art form in the classroom.

There are three aspects to the study. To respond to the question, "What is the nature of art—or of computer art?", one should examine computer art within the context of the four art disciplines of aesthetics, art production, art history, and art criticism. Therefore, a review of literature surveyed four areas: philosophical aesthetics, art education, computer science, and art. Second, as "computer art" is a broad topic, some order needed to be imposed upon the vast amount of information obtained. Therefore, a synthesis of information derived from the review of literature is arrayed in the form of a matrix. The matrix provides a way to organize information about computer art into four areas, with each area corresponding to one of the four art disciplines. Third, the study presents an exemplary instructional unit of lesson plans. The instructional unit utilizes information about computer art drawn from the matrix as content for the lessons presented. Within the lesson plans, suggestions are made to present the content about computer art in ways to encourage an interchange of dialogue among students through the use of questioning strategies, case studies, and role playing.