The results from my four-year study with University of Kent design undergraduates (n=45) represent a recipe for teaching ethos-change in Higher Education. I explored how teaching for transformative experiences (TEs) might stimulate and sustain students’ ethos-change because the design domain needs to “redirect” from consumeristic (Boehnert, 2018) and “de-futuring” (Fry 2009, 2015) norms, to nurturing compassionate and ethical design practices (Manzini, 2015, 2022; Vaughan, 2018). Design students, like others, may be invested in their domain’s conventional practices and education. They therefore need a critical pedagogy to enable them to ‘re-see’ alternative paradigms, but which must also create value for it to be acted upon.
The research therefore involved three studies, each exploring an aspect of Pugh’s (2011) model of teaching for TEs. These components are:
1) expanding perceptions when students re-see, in this case, design-for-consumption as ‘design-for-good’ (DfG)
2) experiencing value for that re-seeing
3) undertaking ‘free choice transfer’ of content, or agency, for DfG.
When a student experiences these aspects together, a TE has occurred (Pugh, 2011).
The findings demonstrated that TEs were powerful in generating ethos change in students’ design practices and personal behaviour. I compiled two annual phenomenographic ‘outcome spaces’ (Åkerlind, 2012) that visualised the data as comparative categories of perception expanding through the cohort towards the re-seeing of design as DfG. Narratives from semi-structured interviews revealed patterns in students’ trajectories towards experiential value. The majority, who either responded to the DfG ethos, or felt they recognised it, optionally decided to practise ethical design as their norm. Others only developed value over time. A few did not espouse DfG, or undertook thoughtful and high-quality compulsory DfG projects but did not choose to do so as options. Findings about transfer showed that students noticed DfG content around them, applied the ethos to their personal behaviour and evangelised about it off-campus. Importantly, the practice in the studio changed with students operating design through a conscious ethic of care.
The following recommendations from the study have proved to be a successful recipe for ethos change:
1. Frame the pedagogy overtly and transparently through the benefits of undergoing TEs (Pugh, 2011).
2. Embed critical pedagogy (Freire, 2017) to support expansion of students' perceptions of how conventional [design] practices create unwanted social and environmental impacts, reinforcing the reasons for ethos change.
3. Acknowledge the discomfort students feel in critical pedagogy (Boler, 2014). Tutors might mitigate negative affect by operating - and overtly modelling - an ethic of care for students.
4. Counterbalance the harshness of critical pedagogy with a partner pedagogy of critical hope (Boler, 2014). For instance, supporting students to perceive their ethical practice as comprised of manageable, smaller projects, reduces student overwhelm, boosts self-efficacy and, thus, enhances experiential value.
5. Recognise the benefit of case studies and real examples of change in your domain as providers of critical hope and value.
6. Create opportunities for high impact collaboration, taking students out of their usual contexts and enabling them to work with, and for, the community in various high-risk, real ethics-based projects.
7. Maintain consistency of ethics as a lens for practice across the curriculum. Utilise ethics reflexivity and reflectivity prompts on every assignment, irrespective of context or topic.
8. Frame ethos-change around the meaningful and visible (Manzini, 2015) aspects of students’ lives. Enable their autonomy of topic choice to demonstrate free-choice content transfer.
The above recommendations, if sustained over multiple modules, and ideally across entire programmes, can transform students’ domain practice-as-care. The undergraduates in my study demonstrated that pedagogical persistence over time generated a community of ethical design practice.
References
Åkerlind, G.S. (2012). Variation and commonality in phenomenographic research methods. Higher Education Research and Development, 31(1), pp.115-127. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2011.642845
Boehnert, J. (2018). Design, ecology, politics: towards the ecocene. London and New York: Bloomsbury.
Boler, Megan. (2014) Teaching for hope: the ethics of shattering worldviews. In: Bozalek, V., Leibowitz, B., Carolissen, R. and Boler, M. Discerning critical hope in educational practices. London and New York: Routledge. pp.26-39.
Freire, P. (2017). Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin Modern Classics.
Fry, T, (2009). Design futuring: sustainability, ethics and new practice. Oxford: Berg.
Fry, T. (2015). Design, ethics and identity. Design Philosophy Papers, 4(3), pp.161-165. https://doi.org/10.2752/144871306X13966268131712
Manzini, E. (2015). Design, when everybody designs. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Manzini, E. (2022, 3-4 November). Rethinking design for social change [conference presentation]. World Design Policy Conference 2022, Valencia. World Design
Pugh, K. (2011). Transformative experience: An interactive construct in the spirit of Deweyan pragmatism. Educational Psychologist, 46(2), pp.107-121. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2011.558817
Vaughan, L. (2018). Design as a practice of care. In: Vaughan, L. (ed). (2018). Designing cultures of care. London, New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts. pp.7-18.