Design Pedagogy

Developments in Art and Design Education

Mike Tovey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781472415981
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317152255
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Design Pedagogy explains why it is vital for design students that their education helps them construct a 'passport' to enter the professional sphere. Recent research into design teaching has focused on its signature pedagogies, those elements which are particularly characteristic of the disciplines. Typically based on core design theory, enlivened by approaches imported to the area, such work has utility when it recognizes the visual language of designing, the media of representation used, and the practical realities of tackling design questions. Increasingly the 21st century sees these activities in a global context where the international language of the visual artefact is recognized. This book draws on recent work in these areas. It includes a number of chapters which are developed from work undertaken during the period of special funding for centres of teaching excellence in the UK up until 2010. Two of those in design have provided the basis for research and innovative developments reported on here. They have helped to enliven the environment for design pedagogy research in other establishments which are also included. Design students need support for the agile navigation through the design process. Learning experiences should develop students' natural motivations and professionalise motivation to create a resilient, informed and sustainable capacity. This is the essence of 'transformative learning'. This collection explores how design education is, in itself, a passport to practice and showcases how some of the key developments in education use techniques related to collaboration, case studies and experience to motivate students, enable them to express their identity, reflect and learn.

PART 1
SETTING THE SCENE

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Chapter 1
Design Education Research: Its Context, Background and Approaches

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EDDIE NORMAN

Design education research is not a new area of activity, and there is a plausible case for considering its origins in the work of Pestalozzi (1746–1827), Fröbel (1781–1852), Cygnaeus (1810–1888) and Salomon (1849–1907), who developed the Sloyd approach (see Ólafsson and Thorsteinsson, 2009). Such early authors, and some more recent ones have developed positions in regard to aspects of design education, implemented them and described the outcomes. Such ‘curriculum development’ is not always recognised as ‘research’ with the underlying concern being that the outcomes of such work are context-specific, and consequently difficult or impossible to transfer or generalise. It is commonly argued that such universal truths are the appropriate goal for genuine research, and it is the credibility of this position in the context of design education that is the central concern of this chapter.

The chapter begins by considering the difficulties in developing generalised models that could frame research investigations and then moves on to discuss the strategies that design researchers have adopted over the past few decades in order to make effective research contributions. These can be classified as studies of the designer, the design context and the design interface, and these classifications provide a background from which to understand developments in design pedagogy.

Towards Generalised Models for Design Education Research

Whether explicitly or implicitly design education researchers position themselves in relation to two key factors, namely:

• the relationship of general and higher education;

• the boundaries of their research.

The issues surrounding these two areas are central to understanding the problematic nature of design education research, and consequently the approaches that are most likely to lead to effective research contributions.

GENERAL AND HIGHER EDUCATION

If this book was about the education (training) of Olympic athletes, or indeed elite performers in any sports, then it would almost be taken for granted that the roots of the task must lie in the formative years of general education. There would be debates concerning the appropriate nature of the early sporting experiences, but an expectation that it would be from these that the elite would be identified and within these that they would initially be nurtured. This is because sporting capability is conceived as something that everyone possesses to some degree, as well, of course, as something that specialist training can develop. Design education emerged into the mainstream of general education in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s, and largely as a result of the work of the Design Education Unit (DEU) at the Royal College of Art led by the late Professor Bruce Archer. At the DEU a dual model of design capability as both universal and specialist emerged, and, although much has changed since the 1980s, this is one position that many of us believe has stood the test of time. Consider this 2006 passage from Ken Baynes who worked with Bruce Archer, and later led the DEU, reflecting on this dual model.

‘These developments in the socio-political realm have been complemented by extraordinary progress in cognitive science and neuroscience. Work in these fields throws new light on the nature of ‘designerly’ thinking and on the personal, social and economic importance of these thought processes.

What cognitive science has done is to show conclusively that designerly thinking and action are features of the mental activities of all humans. It has settled the argument between two apparently contradictory views of design.

1. That design is highly specialist, complex and esoteric – that particularly the act of designing is something which people can do only after a long apprenticeship.

2. That design ability, like language ability, is something that everyone possesses at least to some degree.

We now have to accept that these two views are in fact complementary. The highly complex skills of the professional engineer, fashion designer or CGI artist are simply the specialist development of abilities and understandings that we all have.

The design education ‘movement’ always took the broad view and in doing this they were building on a distinguished tradition that included William Morris, W R Lethaby and Eric Gill.’ (Baynes, 2006: 7)

Detailed discussion of the evidence for this position can be found in Ken Baynes’ book Design: Models of Change (2013), and the key point to note here is that not everyone agrees. Some design education researchers in higher education do not position themselves at the end of food chain over which they have little or no influence, but see their research as something that can be evaluated independently of this complexity.

Design education researchers in general education would naturally acknowledge that their students are developing, and their capabilities changing, as a result of the influence of ‘nature’ alongside ‘nurture’. (Nature’s influences here have to be interpreted to include those from cultural as well as biological sources.) Again some design education researchers in higher education – and I would suggest most – tend to assume that their students have reached ‘maturity’ and that changes in design capability following teaching interventions can be attributed solely to nurture. Recent research on the human brain has shown that development can continue into ‘adulthood’, so this position is also at risk.

BOUNDARIES

There are occasional, perhaps understandable suggestions that education research should be more like medical research – large trials and placebos presumably. Leaving aside the question of what a ‘placebo education intervention’ might comprise (presumably repeating a previous programme while convincing staff and students that it was ‘new’, although it is hard to imagine), the design of such research requires knowledge of all the variables (factors, degrees of freedom) involved. This would certainly require detailed analysis and is by no means straightforward. Indeed, there must be some doubt as to whether or not it is actually achievable. Consider the following example.

Alexandros Mettas is a teacher and teacher educator in Cyprus and for his Ph.D. research he set out to better understand the design decision-making capabilities of his pupils aged 12–15. He conducted a detailed literature review, a pilot study and a main study involving pre-tests, post-tests, observations of design tasks and interviews with the pupils, and analysed these using a grounded theory approach. One of the outcomes was the model of the factors affecting design decision-making for his pupils (shown in Figure 1.1). At the centre were the requirements of the Design and Technology curriculum in Cyprus. There were the factors that relate to any age group – their knowledge, skills and values. There were factors relating to the teacher and the teaching resources, and there were particular factors relating to the children, such as the lack of transfer between school activities and other areas of their lives. In the current context it is not the model itself that is significant, but the way it illustrates the complexity of the design education research context. In order to isolate the effect of one particular factor, research design would need to take account of all these factors.

For example, one aspect of generalising the research findings would be to establish whether the same model also applied in other countries. Mettas’ literature review explored research conducted in many different countries, but the remainder of the research was conducted in Cyprus, and while meeting the requirements of a particular national curriculum. Perhaps further, and even more dominant factors, might appear if the research was repeated with different designing tasks, teachers and in another country. As they read this, design education researchers working with other age ranges and in different design areas are probably already noting differences that relate to their context. So how realistic is it to expect research questions relating to design education to be fully defined, or are they showing the characteristics of ‘wicked’ (or ill-defined) problems with which designers are all too familiar?

Figure 1.1 Model for factors affecting children’s decision-making in design and technology (Mettas, 2012: 188)

Design education researchers approach these difficulties through essentially two strategies. First, they impose boundaries on their research by specifying age ranges, particular design areas and particular contexts. The most limited research contributions apply only to the context from which they were derived: ‘this was the initiative with my students and these were their results’. The more sophisticated contributions will define and analyse the boundaries of the research study in order to maximise the possibilities of transfer. Second, they use ‘designerly’ research methods which are discussed below.

Designerly Research Methods

Significant efforts were made to address the conceptual issues surrounding the question of how design education research could be best approached during the 1990s, and particularly at IDATER (the International Conference on Design and Technology Educational Research and Curriculum Development) which ran from 1988 to 2001. The IDATER conferences were established to support the development of a research base for the introduction of the national curriculum in Design and Technology in England in 1990, but rapidly grew towards greater significance. They became international in 1992 – DATER became IDATER – and there were strands of papers organised by the Design Research Society (DRS) at IDATER99 and IDATER2000. The conferences always sought to support practitioner research, as illustrated by two key theoretical contributions to the understanding of action research as a designerly mode of enquiry. These were made in the Keynote Addresses by Professor Bruce Archer at IDATER91 and Professor Phil Roberts at IDATER2000.

A designerly approach, rather than a scholarly or scientific approach, can with advantage be made towards educational research and curriculum development. Design, in a certain sense, is research done backwards. Research starts with the particular, and moves towards the general. Design starts with the general and works towards the particular. Designers are told, or decide, at the outset, what their end product must be and do. They begin by conceiving of one or more broad configurations that seem likely to be, and to do, what is required. They then elaborate the structure of these configurations and develop the subsystems of one or more of the most promising proposals. They then detail the construction, working backwards to the particular, the bits and pieces, upon whose correct construction depends the efficacy of the whole. At various stages, the validity of assumptions is checked and performances are measured. The same basic design process can be, and is being, applied to the development of all sorts of artefacts and systems that have not hitherto been thought of as subjects for design. For example, providers of banking and other financial services now speak of their products (that is, charge cards, insurance policies, etc.) as having been designed to meet the needs of given classes of the user. Curricula, courses, lessons and examinations are thus proper subjects for design. Happily, the National Curriculum Council’s attainment targets provide ready-made design requirement specifications. A designerly approach to curriculum or course design might be to ask:

What sort of capability profile would a pupil need to exhibit in order to be seen to have attained the target in question? And then:

What are the categories of knowledge, skill and values that contribute to such a profile?

What are the components of each category?

What kinds of learning experience are likely to imprint each of these components of knowledge, skill and value?

How can such learning experiences be provided?

and so on, from the general to the particular, down to exercise design, performance assessment design and resource allocation. There is every reason for teachers of design and technology to use the techniques with which they are familiar to attain the objectives to which they are committed.

I opened this address with the question:

What kind of research is appropriate to the study of education through Design and Technology?

My answer has been:

The designerly mode of enquiry is entirely appropriate to the study of education through Design and Technology. It is also less prone than are scholarly or scientific modes of enquiry to distortions arising from conflicts. (Archer, 1992: 12)

While attracting support from design education researchers, the designerly strategy that Bruce Archer had proposed had remained controversial, which was one of the reasons that it was revisited by Phil Roberts. Among the objectives of Roberts’ Keynote Address were the support of action research as a mode of inquiry and development that is especially appropriate to D&T educational practitioners; the support of the teacher-as-researcher (or practitioner-as-researcher); and the support of the position that action research within education (and D&T education) is intended to improve practice. He described action research as follows.

At its simplest, classroom action research relates to any teacher who is concerned with his/her own teaching: to the teacher who is prepared to question his/her own approaches in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning. Hence, the teacher/practitioner is involved in looking at what is actually going on in the classroom [or studio/workshop]. He/she seeks to improve his/her own understanding of a particular problem (or state of affairs) rather than to impose an instant ‘solution’ upon that unarticulated problem. It is crucial that time be taken for thought and reflection, and it is implicit in the idea of action research that there should be some practical effect of, or end product to, the research which would be based on a now increased awareness of what actually happens in the classroom. It is, as a consequence, towards the construction of a practitioners’ theory, constructed from their experience; and it would intend to be useful.

On this view, some of the characteristics of educational action research are that:

1. its activities and objects are concerned with the deepening of understanding of the studio, workshop, classroom, and school situation by the teacher/researcher adopting a critical, questioning stance. Its starting points are the ‘practical problems’ experienced by teachers, rather than the problems found within the formal theories of the ‘education disciplines’.

2. The...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• Part 1 Setting the Scene
• Part 2 Key Developments in Design Pedagogy
• Index