Hello,
Some months ago on PhD-design was a discussion about the need for designers
to have expertise in theories, understanding and skills from multiple
disciplines, many outside Design..
I'd commented in my experience, theories were structurally much the same in
every discipline because people think much the same regardless of the topic.
Tts simplest to see it as a result of humans having bounds on the way we
think so we tend to fit the way we theorise about the world in every
discipline into the same molds. (There are some relatively formal reasons
involving mereology, set theory, first-order predicate logic etc )
The implication is if you learn a theory structure once, then you can then
learn how the same theory structure is applied in many different
disciplines with much less effort than learning from scratch in every
discipline. This way of thinking can be seen very obviously in systems
theory in terms of archetypes. Francois asked for the detail of how this
applied and doing it has taken me longer than expected.
Last week, however, for a completely different project, I was reading Skemp
on the psychology of learning mathematics. His first three chapters on why
and how we think and learn in terms of concepts and schema seem to address
the above issue well (and are very readable and with no mathematics!)
Why is this useful for Design education and design research?
Some of the recent discussions have been about the need for designers to
have a more formal and more theoretical understanding of issues and
multi-disciplinary expertise at degree level. This of course presents
problems time wise (how do you do several degrees in the time for one) and
problems in terms of spread of expertise (e.g. how do you learn visual
thinking and science and XXX and YYY and. . . to degree level). For design
educators it presents problems in terms of how to provide appropriate
learning experience that will result in 'T' developed human professionals
that are needed to be more like Eras Ultra Bold 'T's than Bookman light
'T's. The reason Skemp's study is potentially of significance (and more so
than more recent writing about education) is learning in mathematics
requires more detailed illumination of concrete vs theory issues that a
really relevant in Design because in essence design is an abstract activity.
The problems addressed by Skemp in this context include that only certain
pathways of learning of concepts and schemas result in useful understanding
that can bridge into further learning. Identifying such appropriate
pathways of schemas and concepts for designer s that are reusable across
Technology, Arts and Humanities would seem to offer a way forward in
improving design education and design practices
Skemp, R. R. (1975) The Psychology of Learning Mathematics. Penguin:
Harmondsworth, UK
Best wishes ,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
Honorary Fellow
IEED, Management School
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
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