The dramatization of practice in design education: (Un)learning by doing through participant observation | Intellect Skip to content
1981
Volume 21, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 1474-273X
  • E-ISSN: 2040-0896

Abstract

Although ‘learning by doing’ is nowadays a standard practice in design education, there is not much reflexivity about what designers actually do with a ‘learning by doing’ approach. Based on my ethnographic research in a design school in Milan, I examine designers’ performance of practical learning by looking at their use of participant observation, a method borrowed from social sciences and applied to an early stage of the students’ design research projects. I detail how, in the exercises with participant observation, ‘practice’ emerges as an aesthetic effect that is performed to simulate the openness of the research, a process I refer to as a ‘dramatization of practice’.

Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • Portuguese Research Council (FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) (Award SFRH/BD/36288/2007)
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2022-04-01
2024-04-23
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