The rise of design in higher education and non-design students’ experiences of learning through design

ABSTRACT

An interest in design integration across school subjects emerged in the 1990s because of pressures on teachers to develop competencies deemed valuable to students for the 21st century, such as problem-solving skills and creative thinking. The 2000s also witnessed a rise in design across higher education curricula. Like schoolteachers at the turn of the century, educators in universities started looking for ways to catch up with their institutions’ move toward marketization initiatives. This article compares the rise of design in schools with higher education. It shows that in both cases, design was adopted as a response to calls for teaching students economic-driven educational goals. The article also provides a possible explanation of why, unlike the variation in types of design taught to school students, design-based learning in higher education focuses on one type, and that is design thinking. The article then presents findings from a qualitative interview study with non-design students across programs who challenge us to consider other types of design they experience and how design learning outcomes are valuable to higher education students beyond market-centric goals.

KEYWORDS:

• Design-based learning
• learning through design
• design integration across curricula
• design thinking
• critical university studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Compliance with ethical standards

• The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work.

• There are no potential conflicts of interest to disclose

• The research involved human participants.

• The researcher obtained ethical approval for conducting the study prior to interviewing participants.

• Research participants signed consent letters before participating in the study.

• The ethics approval letter can be provided by the author to the editors, upon request.