Educating the designerly thinker

✍ Scribed by Rivka Oxman

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 243 KB
• Volume: 20
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0142-694X
• DOI: 10.1016/s0142-694x(98)00029-5

✦ Synopsis

This paper presents a hypothesis about design education that is framed within and derived from cognitive theories of learning. The relevance of design thinking and cognitive approaches to the development of pedagogical approaches in design education is presented and discussed. A conceptual model for design education that emphasizes the acquisition of explicit knowledge of design is proposed. The acquisition of knowledge is achieved through the explication of cognitive structures and strategies of design thinking. The explication process is constructed by exploiting a representational formalism, and a computational medium which supports both the learning process as well as the potential re-use of this knowledge. Finally, an argument is presented that the measure of learning, generally equated with the evaluation of the product of designing, can instead be based upon evaluating learning increments of acquired knowledge.