DESIGN EPISTEMOLOGY
(vs "When are we gonna do woodwork, Sir?")

/ɪˌpɪstɪˈmɒlədʒi,ɛˌpɪstɪˈmɒlədʒi/
 
noun
PHILOSOPHY
 the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion.

 

Debates in epistemology are generally clustered around four core areas:

  1. The philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and the conditions required for a belief to constitute knowledge, such as truth and justification
  2. Potential sources of knowledge and justified belief, such as perception, reason, memory, and testimony
  3. The structure of a body of knowledge or justified belief, including whether all justified beliefs must be derived from justified foundational beliefs or whether justification requires only a coherent set of beliefs
  4. Philosophical skepticism, which questions the possibility of knowledge, and related problems, such as whether skepticism poses a threat to our ordinary knowledge claims and whether it is possible to refute skeptical arguments

Our Unholy Trinity of Problems:

  1. You cannot have excellent learning without excellent teaching.
  2. You cannot have excellent teaching without an excellent curriculum.
  3. You cannot have an excellent curriculum if the subject itself is so ill-defined that it has a different meaning to the students studying it, the teachers leading it, the management system responsible for financial and planning support, the parents at home supporting the students, and the general public.

 

Wholesale changes imposed on Design education in the UK in 2017 from the highest levels and in the most unforgivably chaotic of ways saw the personal identity of valued, experienced, skilled and dedicated teachers eroded to the point that many left the profession, or jumped ship to Art & Design 3D design courses where they could more easily continue to enjoy using their outstanding and hard earned skills doing what they loved best - developing the minds, skills and lives of their students.

 

The chaos, ill-feeling, and misunderstanding persists as a painful hangover today. Welcome aboard, and pass the asprin!

 

These changes were made as a perfectly reasonable reaction to the ever-changing needs of world economies, moving the focus towards Human-Centred Design, and current developments in professional and industrial practice. It is also clear that management of information in a digital age and an increasing range of high-tech manufacturing systems and AI would mean that teaching children to think and design without reference to these developments would be doing them an enormous disservice. To carry on teaching a curriculum fit for the 20th Century would leave a generation without the ability to manage design thinking in the emerging new world.  The creation of this website in 2018 was a direct reaction to this need, and we hope proves useful to anyone involved in design education at any level.

 

 

Our current epistemology and thinking has been developed from the following vital sources, to name but a few:

 

IDEO

Designkit.org

The Design Council

The Faculty of Industrial Design at The Technical University of Delft

Don A Norman, of the Nielson Norman Group

The Ellen McArthur Foundation - How to Build a Circular Economy

Interaction Design Foundation

MIT Media Lab (& ex Mediated Matter Lab leader Neri Oxman)

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

STEM Learning

The PISA Creative Thinking Programme

Seymourpowell

 

Jude Pullen, Ilse Crawford, Product Tank, dantfordant

 

For many more please go to our "FEED THE TEACHER" page