The importance of practising design for design educators and researchers
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2017Metadata
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Isachsen S, Reitan JBR: The importance of practising design for design educators and researchers. In: Berg A, Bohemia E, Buck L, Gulden T, Kovacevic A, Pavel N. proceedings of E&PDE 2017 – International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education. Building Community: Design Education for a Sustainable Future, 2017. The Design Society p. 448-453Abstract
This paper presents a design ‘practitioner’ in dialogue with a design ‘theorist’ about the importance of
practising design for design educators and design researchers. The use of dialogue as a research
method was inspired by dialogue seminars at the Swedish Centre for Working Life. The ‘practitioner’
in this paper is primarily a fashion-design teacher with a background in the design and dressmaking
profession, while the ‘theorist’ teaches specialised design and art and crafts teacher training and
researches vernacular design. Designers and craftsmen continuously make intuitive assessments; this
kind of knowledge is difficult to formalise, although the ‘practitioner’ transmits this knowledge to her
design students while they view samples and practise their craft. Although reflections and choices may
differ, generally speaking, the greater a designer’s or artisan’s experience and repertoire, the deeper his
or her reflection. The ‘theorist’ uses her experiences of designing, knitting and sewing as inside
knowledge in her investigation of how vernacular designers practise and learn to design and make
vernacular clothing. This kind of knowledge is often based on tacit knowledge. Both the practitioner
and the theorist see their own experiences as designers and makers as being crucial for their design
teaching and design research. In line with reading- and writing-based research, design-education
institutions should give their academic staff time and opportunities to practice design as a part of their
profession in order to achieve best practice in design education as well as research in design/design
education.