An exploration of media violence in a junior-high school art classroom

This article reports a classroom investigation into how a group of American junior high-school students understand, interpret and act upon a social issues-based art curriculum designed to explore issues of media violence. Using critical pedagogy, the research goals were to establish students' attitudes, values, creative skills, learned concepts, and/or opinions on media violence; and to illuminate and evaluate the issues-based curriculum approach. The study took place in the art workshop of a Saturday Art School programme at a midwestern university in the United States. A finding was that the young participants' attitudes towards media violence coincided with some of the views of postmodern educators concerning protectionist approaches to media education. Some challenges for implementing a social issues-based curriculum orientation were identified, for example the complexity involved in examining a given social issue.