Design Research Society DRS Digital Library DRS Biennial Conference Series DRS2016 - Future Focused Thinking Jun 17th, 12:00 AM Introduction: Design Education and Learning Michael Tovey Coventry University Follow this and additional works at: https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers Citation Tovey, M. (2016) Introduction: Design Education and Learning, in Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Future Focussed Thinking - DRS International Conference 20226, 27 - 30 June, Brighton, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.618 This Miscellaneous is brought to you for free and open access by the Conference Proceedings at DRS Digital Library. It has been accepted for inclusion in DRS Biennial Conference Series by an authorized administrator of DRS Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Introduction: Design Education and Learning Michael Tovey Coventry University DOI: 10.21606/drs.2016.618 The aim of the Special Interest Group in Design Pedagogy is to bring together design researchers, teachers and practitioners, and others responsible for the delivery of design education, and to clarify and develop the role of design research in providing the theoretical underpinning for design education. These aims are not directed simply at one type of design education, but are intended to include all ages. However as the current membership of DRS is predominantly from universities inevitably there is some emphasis on design education at that level. This conference is taking a perspective based on the experience of the past 50 years of design research as the basis for our understanding of design. In considering how design research can help us address the problems we face now and the challenges that lie ahead, delegates have been invited to address a number of questions in key areas. How can it help frame and address the societal problems that face us? Can it be a creative and active force for rethinking ideas about design? And can it shape our lives in more responsible, meaningful, and open ways? It is quite appropriate that design academics should engage in investigations which are intended to extend our understanding and capability of the discipline. Design academics do almost all of the design research which leads to academic publications. Design practitioners get on with designing, and leave design research to the academic community. A key question is whether or not there are good and effective links between design research and design teaching (Tovey, 2015). The clear conclusion is that there are such links is reinforced by a number of papers at this conference. The strand running through much of the work is that design research does support design teaching, and they show a number of ways in which this is the case. This is a good practical reason for undertaking design research. If there is a close link with design teaching, particularly if design research supports effective design teaching, then that will gives design academics good reasons for doing such research. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License. Michael Tovey Design research is catholic in its approach and wide ranging in the techniques employed. Nonetheless although design is a holistic discipline which can overlap many areas, its research is in some ways limited. In other areas such as a science the research is fundamental. In physics if research stops then effectively the discipline comes to a halt. Without physics research there is no physics. Design is not dependent on research to anything like the same extent. For if academics stopped undertaking design research then designers would continue designing things in more or less the same way as they always have. The world would probably go on as if nothing had changed. It could be argued that design research is not central to design practice. Within much design practice there is the use of the word ‘research’ to mean the stage of information gathering. It is essential in providing the starting point for designing, to inform the evaluative framework, and the context for the design. As such it is a crucial part of the process and necessary to its success. But this is different from what we mean by design research as undertaken in an academic context such as a university. There it is an activity which is directed to exploring and understanding the nature of design, its processes and methods. It has more rigorous academic ambitions than the data gathering part of the design process and it is expected to conform to conventional standards of academic scholarship. There is an obvious link between professional design practice and design education. This is why universities and colleges which provide design courses have tended to recruit designers from design practice to their teaching teams. They bring a particular experience and authority to teaching. At the same time the possession of conventional post graduate academic qualifications is a necessary pre-requisite for holding a full time academic position. Whereas good professional experience as a designer is highly desirable, having a PhD is often essential. The clear implication in design disciplines is that to create a body of work for a PhD you must undertake design research. It is worth noting in passing that many of the key insights of design research have come from academic studies involving students. In the early days of such research this was particularly true. For example the identification of the solution led approach as a key ingredient in the process was based on observations of architectural design students (Lawson 1980). Of course the limitation of studies involving students is that they are only novice designers, and so any conclusions are not as powerful as those based on professional designers. However the area of design research where this conclusion does not necessarily apply is research directed to design education. Clearly research based on design students has relevance to the process of teaching design. It can be argued that research into design pedagogy has a particular authority, functioning crucially to enable us to understand design students better, and thus to enable design education to be improved. At university level and where the research is into pedagogy with a design practice focus, then it helps us to understand more deeply what is needed in preparing graduates for the professional practice of design. 420 Introduction: Design Education and Learning It can be argued that one of the purposes of design education within schools is to equip students with the information and capabilities they need if they are to apply to study design at a university. Although this probably applies to the minority of the students who take design subjects, for them it is important. In schools, design education overall has to achieve much more and its broader reach is extremely important. Similarly research into design pedagogy can also have this wider relevance. ‘Design and Designing: a Critical Introduction’ (S. Garner and C. Evans 2012) provides an overview of design for those at school who are considering embarking on a university or college education in design. It is structured as a collection of essays from a large number of contributors each concerned with a different aspect of the discipline. In the first chapter for example Tovey asserts that the purpose of design education at university level is to provide students with a passport to enter the community of practice of professional design. Such an intention has been present in practice based design education at this level for a significant time. The ambition is to achieve a level of capability to function as designers in the professional world. Reaching this standard requires students to demonstrate a level of professional ‘polish’ and presentation to match that of the practising designer. This however is insufficient, and the most fundamental quality they need is one of creativity. In many areas of design the key to their achieving this lies in their abilities to think in a solution focused way employing visuo-spatial intellectual abilities. The creative synthesising of ideas through design thinking, is the most important capability required to enter the community of professional practice. Such capabilities as these need to be nurtured from an early age if they are to develop into the abilities to think visuo-spatially with a solution focus. They are not developed ab intitio at university and college level. It has been argued that spatial ability is a fundamental form of intelligence along with others such a numerical and literary abilities.(Gardner, 2004) Cross has gone further in suggesting that designerly thinking might be a basic form of intelligence (Cross, 2006). Although the argument for such a view is not conclusive, it is a productive and useful stance to take. It helps by identifying and clarifying features of design ability and it offers a framework for understanding and developing it. What seems to be generally agreed is that these underlying capabilities are ones which need to be nurtured early and developed, not only as the basis for studying design but also to equip students with abilities needed across a range of occupations. This view is of design education as having a wide remit in both providing the next generation of designers, and developing competence in decision making more generally. Research into design pedagogy has a crucial role in supporting the development of innovative and effective design teaching to meet these challenges. Recently design education research has taken a number of directions, focusing on the designer, the design context and the design interface. Each of which provides a useful agenda for developing such research (Tovey 2015) The end goal as that of achieving design programmes which are directed towards equipping graduates for entry to the community of professional practice in itself justifies the engagement of practitioners in the process.