The purpose of this study was to examine the potential of a digital awareness workshop with preservice art education participants to develop art curricula and instructional strategies designed to promote positive dispositions, digital awareness, and benefit students' lives on and off the internet. My own experience with digital harassment and my students' harmful online encounters led to my research interest in this topic. After reflecting on my students' problematic digital situations and my lack of an effective response to meet their needs, I realized that the problem was not unique to my students. Digital harm is a problem faced by students across the country and around the world, and it is one that educators, parents, and policymakers should address. I also realized that the art classroom might be an excellent place to help students learn more about protecting themselves from digital harm through the development of the artist’s critical eye, the aesthetic reflection of the artist, aesthetic or intellectual puzzles, dispositional learning, and reflective art-making. This study provides suggestions for those instructors who are interested in addressing a similar topic with their students. This pragmatic practitioner research founded on Noddings' ethics of care took place at a large Southern university within a Program Development for Educational and Community Contexts course with a convenience sample of eight preservice graduate students in art education. The preservice art teachers who engaged in the study completed art curricula during a multi-part classroom workshop. This curriculum included dispositional learning themes such as critical thinking, problem-solving, care, empathy, and compassion to enhance behaviors that might benefit students during digital interactions. During the workshop, participants engaged with aesthetic puzzles drawn from contemporary art, group discussions and brainstorming, lesson planning, visual-verbal reflections, and art-making. The data analysis results found that there is significant potential for a digital awareness workshop to influence preservice art teachers to utilize dispositional themes as they develop art lesson plans and instructional strategies to benefit students' lives on and off digital platforms. During interviews, before the start of the research, participants unanimously agreed they had not thought about the need to address digital awareness when teaching art. The majority of participants successfully created a curriculum that connected artists, dispositions, and art-making with the development of digital awareness skills. Although some participants had difficulty making connections to the various lesson elements in their curriculum, all exhibited an understanding of how dispositional learning could address digital awareness through their visual and verbal reflections or during interviews that took place at mid-term and following the digital awareness workshop. Beyond the practical suggestions offered by this study, the digital awareness workshop presents a model for the field of art education to consider: the use of dispositional learning themes and aesthetic puzzles can be powerful tools for addressing big ideas that are important in life. There continues to be a clear and present need for preservice teachers to explore the ideas surrounding digital awareness and how activities in the art room can benefit students as they move through their connected lives. While digital needs and interactions will change over time, creating an art program with a digital awareness component should be considered by all—K-12, college, or community educators—who focus on social justice since digital life with its global connections as well as positive and negative interactions, are a daily part of students' lives from a young age. It is hoped that the findings from this study can be used by other experienced or preservice teachers as well as university instructors who are interested in addressing similar topics with their students.
