Hi Rob/Teena
I totally agree about the language issue Rob, as Keith Russell said a while
back on the list, undergraduate students are using research methods, but
unaware of it, as they just think they are solving the brief. I guess this
is, as you say, about moving from tacit knowledge to a position where
through reflection it can become implicit and capable of articulation.
However, I don't think it is just about language, as by knowing there is a
language out there that relates to a body of work you can dig further into
the methods/approaches/ideas. I also think students aren't just engaging
with social science in relation to visual methods. I think a lot of what
might considered to be ethnographic methods (and others) are used as well,
but again students are unaware of this.
Also, relating to the earlier posts about sketching/drawing, depending on
the type of designer you are, one's sketchbooks aren't necessarily going to
be full of sketches, or perhaps visual in the traditional sense. As someone
who is primarily interested in relating to the world through language and
typography, mine are full of words. In the past have had to defend students
whose work develops in a similar way to this with colleagues who think the
only way to work with a brief is to find the answer through experimenting
solely with media.For me, 'sketching' can take a variety of forms, not all
of which are solely visual.
Cheers,
Ali
On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 11:05 PM, Robert Harland <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> Hi Teena
>
> On 6 Oct 2011, at 22:14, Teena Clerke wrote:
>
> -snip-
>
> > like you, many of the design courses in which I have been involved in
> teaching at undergraduate
> > level often continue to neglect or struggle to include basic qualitiative
> research skills and processes
> > that, for example, generate researchable questions and research designs.
>
> Agreed. Although some 'basic qualitative research' skills are also
> practiced unknowingly in art school environments. This is directly aligned
> with what a social scientist may refer to as visual methodology, but in art
> schools is better known as sketchbook development, or equivalent. I find it
> is not so much a struggle, more an issue for language use to connect what
> has traditionally been an 'implicit' rather than 'explicit' practice. In
> fact, just recently, in reviewing a first year PhD animation student, I
> tried to encourage how grappling with the language of research methodology
> may be the key to collaboration beyond art and design. In that particular
> case, it was about the need to articulate the process of animation to the
> non-animator, as a potential research method explaining how animation can
> support research in traditional scientific research. Perhaps I'm stating the
> obvious to say that regarding generating research questions, the process of
> good sketchbook inquiry represents a desire to find something out, but
> usually evidenced through 'images' more than words.
>
>
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