I've been watching this post for a few days, and I think Birger's
message starts to get at a new issue. What sort of
talent/skills/experience should a PhD student have before entering a
design program if they are to be an effective researcher? Instructor?
Practitioner?
In my experience, I've seen an awful lot of undergraduate design
students who treat design as ONLY art. They immerse themselves in
aesthetics, without taking the time to really understand the difference
between design and art as disciplines, and without taking the time to
gain equal footing in other areas that are critical to developing
sufficient insight into the problems they will tackle as designers. You
see it all the time in architecture studios: undergraduate students are
asked to design elementary schools, or hospice programs without having
any first hand experience of what it means to be responsible for a
child, or for somebody they love who's dying, let alone having spent
time learning the theoretical underpinnings of the related disciplines,
such as education or nursing, that would allow them to truly understand
these design challenges. They find an article that talks about one sexy
aspect of the issue, focus on that, and frequently receive unrealistic
praise from narrow academics who've never ventured outside of the design
school, just because they went through the motions of researching the
scenario and slapped on whatever response happened to be covered in a
recent journal, so long as the building looks "elegant" or "challenging"
in whatever way the school espouses.
A graduate student in a design discipline (even a master's student,
though that's not the topic of this forum) should have something to
bring to the table besides an opinion about what they think looks good
before they enter their program. That expertise might be in sociology,
or psychology, or construction, or engineering. It might be in child
development, or public health. It might be in finance, marketing,
organisational behaviour, or logistics. The point is, I don't think you
can understand the breadth of dealing with the different kinds of
externalities inherent in any design problem until you've seen just how
complicated real life gets, and I don't think designers who've chained
together a series of degrees in the same field without significant time
(and financial engagement) in solving real-world problem are prepared to
become scholars in any of the design fields.
Leaders in design should have experience with meaningful practical
problems, not just experience coming in as the white knight bringing
solutions. Before a design scholar is mature enough to approach the
field of design objectively, and adequately research its abilities and
failings, he or she needs to have */subjective/* expertise in dealing
with the aftermath of designs that are insufficient. Designer scholars
who neither practice, nor develop deep familiarity with practical
non-design disciplines, through either education or practice, are very
unlikely to produce either good students or good research.
A designer who seeks a higher degree without first achieving such
understanding is putting the cart before the horse. You must become an
expert in problems before you can become an expert in solutions, and
this almost never happens if the only problems you experience are on
paper. The people for whom we design don't have the luxury of living in
our theoretical world. Designers have to learn to see the entire
breadth of each task they approach, and only approach those that they
have a reasonable possibility of fully engaging.
The PhD question shouldn't be whether it's valuable. Time spent honing
one's skills is valuable. Time spent learning new perspectives from
which to approach problems is valuable. The PhD question should be,
"Whom should we choose to bestow such a limited valuable resource?" "Who
has not just the drive and innate intelligence, but also the ability to
understand the nature of the world as it is experienced by those they
will serve?" It is critical that these questions are on the minds of
university admissions officers when choosing between applicants, so that
those who pursue PhD's will be able to perform their roles in the design
community at the level we should demand.
Alan Overton, M. Arch, MBA
Doctoral Student
Department of Marketing
Southern Illinois University
On 10/11/2011 09:35 AM, Birger Sevaldson wrote:
> I also followed this thread only partly so apologies if my response is repetitive or misfits.
>
> At the Oslo School of Architecture and Design i observe a phenomena that might be general. We have been running a doctoral program with a research education for 30-25 years. While similarly mature programs are found in design education embedded in larger universities this is a bit rare for tiny architectural and design schools (?). The story and development of the doctoral program and school has been documented by dr. Halina Dunin-Woyseth in her article in www.formakademisk.org. There is a development from quite traditional approaches to more design and practice oriented approaches during those years. But there seems to be a reflection of this development in the types of people who approach the phd program. This is my impression and is not veryfied in any way so dont take it too seriously: While before a typical PhD student would be a "nerd" who was not a good designer, or who even would be a person who did not make it as a designer, today the most resourceful people are seeking to the program, people with advanced practices who are at the cutting edge of their design practices and who therefore realize that they need a research dimension to their work.
>
> If this is a general trend and if we agree that the design education and practice of the future needs to be better prepared for research based practice, to meet the enormous challenges we face, then the conclusion must be NO, PhDs are no threat to design education. In contrary there seems to be something very interesting happening where PhD is a central thing that might be more or less fully integrated and for many designers absolutely needed in the design education of the future. Many more design practices than to day might be research driven. At our school the master level education now needs to catch up with this development as mentioned before.
>
> Best
> Birger Sevaldson
> ________________________________________
> Fra: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] på vegne av Ken Friedman [[log in to unmask]]
> Sendt: 11. oktober 2011 10:10
> Til: [log in to unmask]
> Emne: Re: Are PhDs a threat to design education?
>
> Dear Teena,
>
> Thanks for your reponse. Perhaps the point was not entirely clear. This
> is not simply a qualitative dimension. It is a qualitative dimension
> with respect to research.
>
> The dimension you describe here seems to be pedagogical. This is an
> important dimension that involves educating individuals rather than
> contributing to the body of knowledge of a field. This is not a matter
> of research scale, but a different scale entirely.
>
> My comments have focused on research and the role of the PhD with
> respect to research.
>
> The kinds of dialog you describe are important, but they do not involve
> research; these kinds of dialog take place within all fields: this is
> the domain of reflective practice, and one must reflect on the practice
> of research as well as on the practice of design.
>
> Some years back, an outraged design student exploded during a
> presentation I was giving on research methods. He asked if I’d rather
> solve the methodological problem I had been describing or end world
> hunger.
>
> If I could choose between solving a problem in research methodology and
> ending world hunger, I would end world hunger. I don’t have that
> choice, and confusing the two issues doesn’t help.
>
> To say that dialogue and reflection are important in educating design
> students is reasonable. To say that dialogue and reflection are a
> research activity is not.
>
> One does not need a PhD to engage in dialogue and reflection. Many who
> have a PhD engage in dialog and reflection in teaching and in conducting
> research. Dialogue and reflection help people to think and work better.
> This is often more valuable than publishing a journal article. It is
> nevertheless not a research activity.
>
> Yours,
>
> Ken
>
> Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished
> Professor | Dean, Faculty of Design | Swinburne University of Technology
> | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Ph: +61
> 39214 6078 | Faculty
>
> --
>
> Teena Clerke wrote:
>
> —snip—
>
> I too describe what you call a qualitative dimension, but suggest
> however, that how we evaluate the ‘performance’ of ‘great’
> scholars might be a matter of scale. That is, there are many design
> scholars who influence how people think and do on a daily basis through
> their varied practices, but whose influence escapes acknowledgement
> through quantitative audit systems that measure research output alone,
> or some other quantitative measure of graduate outcomes – people who
> teach in first year subjects for example, and casual or visiting
> academics who are not required to publish written articles.
>
> Drawing on my own experience, I have had many teachers, some of whom
> are students, who have, sometimes unwittingly, introduced me to new
> thinking and new ways of doing through classroom dialogue. I am
> suggesting that these intimate exchanges, while much more difficult to
> account for, might be AS valuable as, rather than MORE valuable than,
> articles published in scholarly journals. The idea of dialogue extends
> to informal corridor chat at scholarly conferences and elsewhere, and
> while obviously there are many instances where classrooms and
> conferences generate very little that is new or interesting, again, I
> argue that it is a matter of scale.
>
> —snip—
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