I think Gunnar and Chuck have raised a significant point for design
educators. In Sydney, most university courses/standards/entry
requirements focus less on 'talent/intuition' than on secondary
school scores in academic achievement, with some offering portfolio
interviews. Once students enter design education at a tertiary level,
educators have a defined standard to 'teach' and 'assess' in an
economic environment which often means 2 hours contact a week with
tutorial sizes of up to 25 students. This often negates the
educator's opportunity to identify and nurture individual talent if
it falls outside the accepted levels of achievement - there simply
isn't time.
And even if talent is identified and nurtured by educators, the way
this is managed is dependent on the educator's own training in
education. Often design educators do not undertake formal education
on how to teach, and the process of learning is misunderstood, with
emphasis placed on tangible outcomes and achievements. Quite often
learning is experiential and personal (see Brookfield, 1987 on
significant personal learning, and Mezirow, 1983 on transformative
learning), so it may be useful for the educator to enhance student
learning by providing an environment in which students may learn from
each other in a supportive way, rather than competitive, which is
often the case in current university design environments.
Regardless of whether education is free/only for the rich, I wonder
if there are statistics on the career trajectories of those design
students identified with talent and those who are considered un/less
talented? This is something I have often thought about when
considering the large numbers of hopeful students lining up to become
graphic designers.
regards, teena
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Teena Clerke
PO Box 1090
Strawberry Hills NSW 2012
0414 502 648
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