Paul Duncm's Life and Study on the Impact of Technological Stimuli

Do you ever just sit back and wonder how many images run through your brain everyday and thinking back on that how many of those were images from our society’s pop culture? With our ever growing technology and media of our society, children are constantly being exposed to visual stimuli. Paul Duncum, a professor of art education, studies how these stimuli not only affect our students and children but also how we can incorporate them into the art classroom in an effective way. In this paper I will illustrate to you the life and work of Paul Duncum. I will be talking about Duncum’s contributions to art education, his teaching philosophy, and how I can use his beliefs and teachings in my future as an art educator but first I would like to give you some background on Paul Duncum.
Paul Duncum initially graduated college with a degree in graphic design in 1970, from Sydney Technical College. In 1974 he returned back to school and began work on his B.A. at the Flinders University of South Australia, in Art history and theory, which he completed in 1977. Duncum also received his graduate diploma from Adelaide College of Arts and Education in art education in 1979. According to the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, he then went back to Flinders University in 1981 to being working to get his P.h.d in Art Education. During this time he was also teaching high school art and design. (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2003) Paul Duncum then started his current career as a college lecturer and professor. His first lecturing position was at the Brisbane College of Advanced Education in the visual arts curriculum. A year later he moved on the Central Queensland University as a senior lecturer in the visual arts curriculum. In 1...

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...isual culture. I want to ask my students to look at an image and be able to tell me why something is effective or how does it relate to them if at all.
We are constantly being bombarded with visual culture throughout every hour of the day, though at times it may seem overwhelming and desensitizing, it is only getting more prevalent. Paul Duncum is an art educator who is corporating these aspects of visual culture in the classroom everyday and also teaching his students to do this as well. I have talked about Paul Duncum educational history, his contributions to art education, his teaching philosophy, and how I can use his beliefs and teachings in my future as an art educator. With my new found knowledge of Paul Duncum and his teaches, I hope, as a future educator to follow in his footsteps of incorporation of our society’s importance of visual art in my classroom.