Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/84481

Title

Design research and training: views of educators in a university of technology in Australia

Author(s)

Melles, Gavin

Abstract

The restructuring of Australian (and UK) higher education in the nineties brought design fields from a primarily vocational post-compulsory sector into a new university sector aiming to combine traditional notions of scholarship and research with applied industry concerns. This balancing act has proved challenging for many fields, and in particular for art and design fields. In design fields, debate continues about the balance of vocational, practice and academic concerns in higher education and challenges to educators formed in an era of more overt vocationalism. Design schools have adopted multiple strategies to meet the requirement for a design research culture, including recruiting research credentialed staff and credentialing staff through research degrees. While these strategies are having an effect, some design educators remain doubtful of the value of a research culture to design and hopeful that alternative measures, including practice-based degrees, will accommodate existing practices and values of design practice. Unless some consensus is achieved faculties and schools of design risk creating antagonistic tribes or communities of practice, and little is currently known about how such schools are faring. No previous empirical studies have examined the perception of design educators regarding the new values and demands of design research. In this qualitative interview-based study, I examine the perspectives of a cohort (n = 50) of full-time and part-time design educators in an Australian university regarding design research and research training. Conclusions draw implications for the emerging field of design and the characteristics of academic design research.

Publication type

Journal article

Research centre

Swinburne University of Technology. Faculty of Design

Source

Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences: selected revised papers from 'Innovation and creativity in education', the 2nd World Conference on Educational Sciences (WCES-2010), Istanbul, Turkey, 04-08 February 2010 / Huseyin Uzunboylu (ed.), Vol. 2, no. 2 (2010), pp. 757-761

Publication year

2010

Keyword(s)

Australia;  Design research;  Higher education;  Practice-based design;  Vocational practice

Publisher

Elsevier

ISSN

1877-0428

Publisher URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.097

Copyright

Copyright © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Peer reviewed