Sustaining a core identity in adolescence: The role of the visual arts in the interplay of self and culture

The research findings in this dissertation demonstrate that when 8th grade middle-school students created a triptych artwork exploring the theme of "self" and "culture" they created images by hand and also integrated appropriated images from various technology and/or media based sources. Adolescents took personal actions and made choices to create specific imagery. Their triptych artworks incorporated affect and highly personalized aesthetic choices that frequently surpassed the collective, or "shared" aspect of any media appropriated or found image. Adolescents assigned qualitatively different meanings to images that were generated by hand as opposed to images generated by a computer. Hand-generated images were considered to be more "personal" and express "what's inside of you." Digital images were used to convey more details to show one's self within relationships with one's peers and to solve the problem of a lack of drawing skills.;Twenty-two middle-school students' participated in this study. Structured interviews revealed major categories and sub-categories that created a framework to understand how the adolescents experienced "self" in relation to their culture. Content analysis was applied to narrative descriptions of students' triptych artworks and similarities were found between the major categories and sub-categories that emerged from the interview data treatment. There were examples in the data when adolescents exhibited a relational self- connection to media sources, such as a T.V. program, but these were in the minority of the research findings.;Results indicate that if adolescents can engage in creative "playing" through art making even if these activities are technologically mediated, the artistic process creates the conditions for them to make meaningful and empowering connections to their self through their culture. These findings challenge the postmodern vision of a "self" that is fragmented by technology----relational and constructed without a core identity.;These study results have implications for art education policy makers, schools, and those who value the role of the arts-in-education to create conditions that enable adolescents to sustain a core identity, despite the predominance of technology in the 21st century.