Conference Agenda

The concept of sustainability ethos can be defined as a context enabling an articulated set of educational aims and values to translate into curricula and promote capabilities that empower graduates to create change towards sustainable futures. While emerging as an important factor in developing sustainability-centered design curricula, further research is required to fully comprehend its educational significance, and how it intersects with the prevailing outcome-based approach to higher education curriculum development. This paper draws from interviews with academics and graduate students from three sustainability-centered design programs internationally to explore what enabled sustainability to be integrated in the programs. The findings reveal that a common vision, shared values, and articulated goals and pedagogies are considered essential. Although these factors were clearly conveyed by the interviewees, they were not formalized, pointing to the limitations of the outcome-based approach and the significance of a sustainability ethos in translating sustainability-focused educational goals into pedagogy.

Amidst the challenges of our time, characterized by pervasive uncertainty and global crises, despair often overshadows hope. Within the context of design-driven futuring, where long-term futures and possibilities are envisioned and shaped, the absence of hope can leave designers feeling powerless and doubting the impact of their work on a predetermined world. Yet, hope is a human experience that can be nurtured. This research explores the inner world of design students, addressing their emotions, thoughts, and perceptions. We conducted design experiments in Master's programs in Denmark and Italy, adopting a contemplative approach during design-driven futuring processes. Contemplative practices, known for fostering inner transformation, have shown positive effects on emotional and cognitive states in various fields. However, their potential in design remains largely unexplored. This study aims to illuminate how contemplative approaches can cultivate hope and empower designers in the face of today’s challenges.

To confront the growing uncertainties and challenges on a global scale through design, this paper recommends using the sharing culture as a starting point. It establishes a connection between the sharing economy and impact-centred design by examining the components and scope of the sharing economy in existing literature. Exploring how this framework can be integrated into design education, the paper offers a comprehensive account of a course on impact-centred design, grounded on sharing economy. Throughout four years, this framework was applied to explore design solutions for addressing themes related to crisis response, disaster management, and collaborative consumption. We provide methods and deliverables to illustrate how the sharing economy and design thinking collaborate to uncover systems-level exchanges and interactions among stakeholders. Our discussions focus on the transformative influence of such design contexts on the role of the designer, the scale of the design's impact and the designer responsibility.

A renewed interest, propelled by the European Bauhaus initiative, has sparked a re-evaluation of design education in response to the growing complexity and interdisciplinary demands of design, encompassing both craftsmanship and academic discipline. While ongoing discussions focus on school types, curriculum development, and pedagogical approaches, there is an oversight in examining the expertise profiles of design educators. These profiles encapsulate the competencies and proficiencies of teaching staff, profoundly influencing the ethos, objectives, philosophy, and substance of education institutions. This paper proposes a theoretical framework delineating three archetypal expertise profiles for design educators: design practitioner, design researcher, and hybrid, nuanced to reflect the multifaceted nature of design expertise. Drawing insights from design history, theory, and professional experience, this framework holds promise in guiding the cultivation of expertise profiles, prioritizing proficiency enhancement, curation, and recognizing the value of hybrid profiles. Our aspiration is to elevate the quality, relevance, and adaptability of design education amidst the evolving landscape of contemporary design.

Design education's pedagogy of ambiguities and the One-on-One Master-Apprentice's Hidden Curriculum purportedly led to psychological distress and poor academic performance for beginning design students. Despite favourable social conditions, few studies have examined Social Support as positive adaptations towards students' academic resilience in design studios. This mixed methods randomised controlled trial compared One-on-One and Cross-pollinative Team Learning (CTL) students. Inferential statistics revealed that One-on-One students were more resilient (p = .065 & p = .126), but CTL students have academically outperformed significantly (p = .0003 & p = .017). Thematic Analysis of CTL students’ focus group interview as they transitioned to One-on-One pedagogy during their second year revealed that ongoing peer-to-peer social support was crucial in mitigating negative experiences with the siloed pedagogy. This paper emphasises the need to cultivate a heterarchical pedagogical culture among students, where failure is seen as a learning opportunity, and criticism is taken as constructive feedback for growth.

This study examines the relationship between students' metacognitive awareness, academic goal orientations, and design course grades as a design learning criterion in design education and proposes improvements for future design education. Based on the view that metacognitive awareness and academic goal orientations are important in student's academic success, this study investigates whether there is a difference among students with different metacognitive awareness levels concerning their academic goal orientations and design course grades. The study was carried out with 84 undergraduate architecture students. Students were divided into two groups: students with high and low metacognitive awareness levels using the non-hierarchical cluster analysis method. Metacognitive Awareness Inventory and Academic Goal Orientation Questionnaire were used in the study. The results indicate that there is a statistically significant difference between the two groups, and it is a large effect size. Additionally, relationships between goal orientation, grades, and metacognitive awareness were determined.