engleski

Practicing design : rethinking design education

This Study explores the extent to which the changes brought by new socio-economic paradigm shift and its influence on social and economic behaviour in the last 20 years are reflected in design education and practice. Furthermore, this Study attempts to identify the root causes of design education and design curriculum content maladjustment to the needs of contemporary era. It also identifies the current challenges design education is facing today. Theoretical and empirical research results, particularly in the form of knowledge, skills and competencies, served as the ground for proposing appropriate guidelines for the improvement of current design education and the content of the design curricula. The results of the Study reveal theoretical and empirical evidence that confirms the assumption about the current mismatch between knowledge and skills acquired in formal design education and skills needed in current and future design practices. This mismatch is mostly related to the managerial and social skills needed for solving problems and demands of real life design practice and to a smaller extent, to practical design knowledge and competencies. Therefore the Study argues that design education should be carried within a multidisciplinary context, which will embrace all necessary knowledge, skills and competencies needed for future successful professional design practice, and that design education should be more practice-based oriented, allowing studentsto work on specific real life projects. Since the evidence suggests that educational institutions in their attempts to provide additional skills and competencies are faced with financial and bureaucratic constraints, which create a gap, or lack of professionals from other specialist disciplines, design education institutions should consider finding alternative sources for financing those specialist and alternative ways of training students in deficient disciplines or skills. Furthermore, the Study argues that there is a need for finding more effective way of transferring economic knowledge to design students and that the business sector and other interested parties need to better learn each other’s languages in order to achieve more productive communication. Design educational institutions should present their students the importance of business management and raise awareness of the business sector about the value of design.

rethinking design education ; design practice ; skills ; competencies ; challenge ; knowledge society

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