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Thanks Terry I present design learning in the last posting as two words but maybe they could best be presented as design-learning><observation-learning a single conception of those engagements with the world which are productive of visual 'things' such as images artefacts etc...the significance of this learning is that the products and the methods of production engage multiple layers of meaning and produce multiple layered understandings...you might say a different layering of meaning for each 'maker' and 'viewer'and with each revisitation to presentation of an image. There has been a lot of discussion concerning the notion of judgement in relation to such productions in design...however the context of my use of these approaches is within the mainstream academy where analytic, interpretative, critical, rational, normitive formations of learning dominate...judgement in this Western traditional context is almost always based on an exclusion of the visual as a sound basis for a philosophy. The programs i conduct are titled Indigenous Knowledge & Indigenous Philosophy...these programs are based in a Visual Philosophy...essentially a philosophy wherein the texts have been seen by western viewers as "ART" for decades. In such a context the normal design things that happen in art/design schools become tools for engageing students in understandings across cultures... they also teach the basics of this Indigenous visual philosophy which is founded in a very particular natural systems morality concerning knowledge itself. To make the jump across these understandings of the world design-learning is a collaborative visual-emotional & practical knowledge negotiation from which a group understanding emerges because in the non-reductive complexity of multilayered visual negotiations knowledge often seems to just happen prior to judgment ...indeed this is a context where the suspension of judgement is a prime moral code. When these knowledge 'things' begin to just happen in a group we then begin to focus on the meta-relations of knowledge negotiations...those patterns observed in our interactions which prompt knowledge events...which we may then represent visually in many individuated conceptions that are then brought together to establish another layer of knowledge negotiations....another engagement cycle of design-learning><observation-learning where we may begin to track the temporal rhythms of these patterns. This approach focuses on people engageing equally as human beings through visual and oral knowledge formation without a central control, a series of texts or defined-implied objective. Sometimes it is a lot of fun and students occasionally make profound cross-cultural transformations of their understanding of human-being-in-the-world. Norm At 08:20 AM 26/08/03 +0000, Terence Love wrote: >Dear Norm, > >Good post. You say, > >"Design learning can be seen as an interaction and manipulative interplay >between persons, materials, objects, our conceptions and the responses they >elicit...at another level this activity may be seen as an enmeshment within >the relations which constitute the whole of a being-in-the-world...this >view presents design as elemental to human sapience as a continual (albeit >inhibited & interrupted in some societies) cognitive tradition undivided >from the world...an enmeshment within the relational knowledge of the world." > >Just wondering why 'design learning' . Seems to me that what you are >describing in this and your second paragraph is the same as what is normally > meant by 'learning' - the ordinary sort that is learnt in order to do something with it. >Seems a bit odd to need to prefix it with 'design'? > >I welcome your thoughts. > >Cheers, > >Terry > [log in to unmask] Norman Sheehan Lecturer Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit University of Queensland Brisbane Old 4072 Australia