Belart Synthesis in Classroom: A Proposal for a School

Belart Synthesis in Classroom: A Proposal for Ecole XY School

In recent years, societies worldwide have witnessed a revolution in technology in every field of knowledge, including the education sector. Technology has become an essential component of life, being used by almost everyone with children of schooling age not left behind. In the education arena, the use of technology has been observed to increase learning opportunities as teaching applications and platforms have been developed to disseminate knowledge to students. As a result, several benefits are emanating from technology utilization in classrooms, such as ease of communication. However, the students using technology have been observed to indulge in other online activities that lead to abusive utilization of service. Technological misuse among learners and teenagers, in general, has been reported in the violation of privacy, lack of ethics when interacting online, diminishing online reputation for this age group, and cyberbullying (Assumpcao & Sleiman, 2011; Barczyk & Duncan, 2012; Hazari & Brown, 2013; Zhou et al., 2013). In other words, most students do not seem to understand the dangers associated with irrational use of technology, which lead to cyberbullying and other atrocities. Consequently, without proper guidance, learners can easily carry these habits into the classrooms that use technology to deliver learning.

Nonetheless, research shows that there is little knowledge regarding what can happen when educators teach students to adhere to the appropriate usage of technology in the classroom. A major reason for the gap is the lack of a pedagogical framework that can be used to ensure that students learn to use technology responsibly and in a creative way to allow them to embrace design thinking (García-Pérez et al., 2016). In Europe, for instance, there have been efforts to align the digital agenda to the contemporary changes within a pedagogical model of education to fulfill the demands of the current society in terms of imparting knowledge. Most of these efforts have, however, not succeeded in developing a unique framework that incorporates creativity, empathy, and responsibility among learners using technology to pursue knowledge. In such a context, this project seeks to propose a framework known as Belart Synthesis that teachers can utilize to enable students to learn technologically while adhering to responsible, empathic, and creative use of the internet. The framework will be applied to one of the schools in XY and Z called Ecole XY to evaluate how it can support the learning of students in the contemporary era of technology. Already, Ecole XY has a fascinating technological infrastructure with several devises and instructors that teach the students how to use equipment to learn. However, there is lack of pedagogic project that involves the application of the tenets of Belart Synthesis. As a result, this paper will describe Belart Synthesis, its application to the case study school based on the components making it up, the anticipated outcomes, and the concluding thoughts.

The Description of Belart Synthesis

The concept of Belart Synthesis is an own-derived terminology considered to be a constituent of several disciplines, namely Digital Citizenship, Digital Empathy, Digital Arts, and Arts-Based Research in Expressive Arts Education. The meaning of the term can be understood after the definition of the components that constitute the concept. Beginning with Digital Citizenship, it can be considered in general that a digital citizen is a person using technology to obtain information that can help them engage with society, politics, and the government. However, the utilization must be effective to create an indication that there are norms accompanying the use. Therefore, combining the usage criteria and appropriate behavior with the need to look for information, Ribble (2011) defines digital citizenship as the norms of proper and responsible attributes in regards to technology utilization. Relating the definition to the educational context, Crichton et al. (2012) perceive digital citizenship as a technique of sharing applications and utilizing the school's internet network responsibly and appropriately while using mobile technology. Although Crichton and colleagues (2012) define digital citizenship from the perspectives of education, appropriateness and responsible technology usage emerge in particular to digital citizenship. In a nutshell, Common Sense Media White Paper (2011 cited in Isman & Canan Gungoren, 2014) reports that the goals of digital citizenship in the 21st century are to instill knowledge, empower, and protect. According to Ribble and Bailey (2007), the three components can be explained in terms of etiquette, digital literacy, and online safety/security. Therefore, an appropriate definition of digital citizenship can be an ethical, responsible, and moral use of technology while ensuring one's safety and that of others when networking in an increasingly digitalized world.

Digital empathy, on the other hand, is a holistic approach that combines psychological empathy, communication in the social information processing theory, and research of new literacies in education to teach and research media in the digital age. In the digital world, embracing digital empathy would mean that an individual is bringing in other skills into their life, such as cognition, emotional control, and improved social skills. These acquisitions lead to three theoretical lenses that include empathy phenomena, social information processing theory, and digital and media literacies (Friesem, 2016). These theories enable a researcher to define empathy in terms of ability and process, create distinctions between face-to-face and computer-mediated communication, and examine how the digital age population needs the attributes of literacy competencies. The successful combination of the theories illustrates the use of empathy as an integral, social, emotional, and cognitive developmental component in both online and offline spaces.

The last component, expressive arts therapy (EXA), implies a general intermodal utilization of multiple modalities, ranging from dance (Bräuninger, 2012), music (Gattino et al., 2011), and drama (Heimes, 2011) to storytelling and visual arts to improve mental and physical health as well as the overall well-being of patients with a range of conditions. EXA can be used in learning to showcase a paradigm that is concerned with the enhancement of creativity through the use of art media, images, and the processes of creative arts. These tenets can be combined with responses from the recipients to establish products that emanate from the reflection of the person's development, personality, abilities, concerns, and conflicts.

A look at the definitions of EXA, digital citizenship, and digital empathy derives the meaning of Belart Synthesis as a holistic approach that teaches students the responsible use of technology in an empathic way while promoting new literacies in education using expressive arts to foster critical and creative thinking. In other words, it is a teaching framework that incorporates digital citizenship in the aspect of the appropriate use of technology while inspiring the use of empathy in online interactions and fostering critical design thinking emanating from the scholar-self and artist-self. The concept is integrated with expressive arts to develop digital creative modalities and experiential Project Based Learning. Therefore, applying Belart Synthesis from such a perspective implies that the students can embrace digital citizenship and empathy while adopting creativity that can be utilized in the outside world to contribute to future technological advancements in the same line of Belart Synthesis for future generations.

Typical Application of Belart Synthesis

It should be noted that the application of Belart Synthesis in a classroom context should entail the three major components making up the framework, namely digital citizenship, digital empathy, and expressive arts therapy. The aim should be based on the need to help students embrace responsible and empathic learning through technology while remaining creative enough to develop technologies that adhere to Belart Synthesis in the future.

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