a framework for design and design education: a reader containing papers from the 1970s and 80s

Professor L Bruce Archer

Ken Baynes

Phil Roberts

A framework for Design

and Design Education

A reader containing papersfrom the 1970s and 80s

A Framework forDesign and DesignEducationBruce ArcherKen BaynesPhil Roberts

A reader containing key papers from the 1970s and 80s

Design Education Research Group,Department of Design and Technology

First published 2005 by DATA

The Design and Technology Association 16 Wellesbourne HouseWalton RoadWellesbourneWarwickshireCV35 9JB

The moral right of Bruce Archer, Ken Baynes and Phil Roberts tobe identified as the authors of this work has been asserted inaccordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

© 2005 Copyright texts by the authors© 2005 Copyright this edition DATA and Loughborough University

ISBN 1 898788 78 2

A Framework for Design and Design Education 1

Contents

Introduction

The Three Rs 8Bruce Archer

The Need for Design Education 16Bruce Archer

Of Models, Modelling and Design: 22An Applied Philosophical EnquiryPhil Roberts

Criteria, Objectives and Competencies 34Bruce ArcherPhil Roberts

Design Education: the Basic Issues 44Ken BaynesPhil Roberts

Basic Issues Revisited: Agenda for the Future 52Ken BaynesPhil Roberts

Select Bibliography 56

A Framework for Design and Design Education2

The Authors

Bruce Archer CBE, Dr RCA, Hon DSc, CEng, MIMechE[1922 – 2005]Served Scots Guards, 1941-44; City University, 1964-50. Various posts in manufacturingindustry, 1950-57. Lecturer, Central School of Art and Design, London 1957-60. GuestProfessor, Hochschule Für Gestaltung, Ulm 1960-61; Research Fellow, later Professor,Royal College of Art 1961-88, Head of Department of Design Research RCA 1968-86; andof Design Education Unit. Director of RCA Research 1985-88. Member: Design Council,1972-80; International Science Policy Foundation from 1979; Council, Association of ArtInstitutions. Chairman, Confederation of Art and Design Associations 1981-88; Director,Gore Projects Limited 1982-90; Design Research Innovation Centre Limited, 1982-86;Honorary DSc City University 1986; Varied publications on theory and practice of DesignResearch, Design Development and Education.

Ken Baynes ARCAKen Baynes is editor of Cook School magazine and until recently was visiting Professorat the Design and Technology Department, Loughborough University. He is a partner inthe Brochocka Baynes educational design partnership.He was trained as a painter and craftsman in stained glass but has spent the whole of hisprofessional life working as a designer, educator and writer. Head of the DesignEducation Unit at the Royal College of Art. Responsible for a ground breaking series ofexhibitions created in partnership with the Welsh Arts Council. Many toured in Englandand Scotland after opening in Wales. They included Snap! (with the National PortraitGallery), the Art and Society series, Scoop and Scandal and Strife (toured in theNetherlands), and The Art of the Engineer (with the Science Museum). His most recentexhibitions include the ART of LEGO, The Art Machine, Design Works, Animal Magic andArtworks. He was the scriptwriter and presenter for the Design Matters television serieson Channel 4 dealing with every aspect of design.

Phil Roberts MA(Ed) PhDDeputy Vice-Chancellor, Loughborough University.Professional experience includes appointments as Head of Design Faculty; DeputyHeadteacher; Tutor and Research Supervisor, Department of Design Research and DesignEducation Unit, Royal College of Art; Research Fellow, Curtin University, Perth, WesternAustralia; LEA Inspector (Art and Design); HM Inspectorate (Art and Design); sometimeGeneral Secretary, and Chair, National Association for Design Education (NADE);sometime Hon Secretary, Confederation of Art and Design Associations (CADA).Formerly Head of Department of Design & Technology, Dean of Faculty of SocialSciences & Humanities, Loughborough University.Principal areas of research interest are: the design of research into design; the designcurriculum; design pedagogy, design philosophy (especially epistemology andsemantics), design cognition, design educational policy. Published in areas of designeducation, curriculum, philosophy and pedagogy.

The aim of this publication is to make morereadily available ideas and approachestoward theory about design and designeducation that came together at London’sRoyal College of Art during the late 1970sand early 1980s. This is worth doingbecause the relevant texts are now difficultto find. Many were originally contained inConference proceedings or journals. It iscertainly not possible now to find thembrought together in one place.

The work at the College took place under theleadership of Bruce Archer. He put forward anumber of radical propositions that shapedthe ‘design education movement’ and whichprovided – and continue to provide – anextraordinarily useful framework for researchand teaching. The essence of the argument iscontained in ‘The Three Rs’ (see page 8), apaper which Archer presented on a numberof occasions in slightly different versions.

In ‘The Three Rs’, ‘Design’ is identified forthe first time as a missing sector in generaleducation, balancing and complementingthe Humanities and Science. The claimremains controversial but it contains abrilliant new insight that goes beyond C PSnow’s idea of the ‘Two Cultures’. The fieldof ‘Design’ emerges as something morethan a rag bag of things that are ‘other thanScience’ or ‘other than Humanities’. It isseen as an operational area of doing,making and human being that includesshaping the world of material culture andmany aspects of the arts.

From this, two other essential insightsfollow. The paper identifies ‘language’ (ornatural language) as the essential mediumof the Humanities and ‘notation’ (andespecially mathematical notation) as theessential medium of Science. What then isthe essential medium of Design? Theanswer given is: modelling. This is a daringleap towards new areas of meaning andanalysis. It has the potential to re-define, re-locate and re-interpret both design activityand design educational activity. Its fullsignificance is still being worked throughand discovered.

The second insight is that all human beingsshare the capacity to make models in themind and to use these models to shapetheir own and the world’s future. In short,that all human beings are able to designand to understand design phenomena, andthat the ability to design is an essential anduniversal aspect of human culture.

This also distinguishes the field of Designand the activity of designing. Thisconceptual and terminological classificationoffered scope for the clearer discussion ofdesigning.

‘The Three Rs’ goes on to attempt thedifficult task of identifying the knowledgebase for Design. It does this in a series ofvery brief definitions but Archer’staxonomy for the field has not beenbettered or superseded. Again, itssignificance is still being worked throughbut it appears to provide a conceptual keythat can unlock many intellectual dilemmasthat continue to plague design educatorsand researchers.

Archer continued to refine and develop hisideas and he was joined in this task by PhilRoberts and Ken Baynes. Together theyworked towards a series of propositionsabout design and design education which,they argued, should form the basis offuture national policy on design education:

• all human beings are born with at leasta degree of design capability anddesign awareness: that is, humans havean innate capacity to design;

• material culture – the world of ‘things’and ‘places’ created by human beings –is the direct result and repository ofdesign capability and design awarenessworking within societies;

• design capability, in its functioning,depends on a number of characteristiccognitive processes found in humanintelligence – particularly ‘cognitivemodelling’ or ‘seeing in the mind’seye’;


Introduction

Introduction

• it is on the ability to model futurepossibilities in the mind that all otheraspects of design and technologicalactivity depend including ways ofexternalising and sharing designproposals and bringing them to fruitionby the use of management skill,economics, tools, technology andscientific knowledge;

• specific design capabilities latent in allyoung children can be identified andsystematically extended and developedby teaching and learning;

• the crucial strategy for developingdesign capability and awareness is toenable and encourage children andyoung people to experience and reflecton design activity for themselves incontexts relevant to their age and stageof cognitive/emotional development;

• because many of the key issues facingthe world are related to materialculture and the wise use of technology,it is important for the cultural,economic and environmental future ofthe world to provide the human andphysical resources necessary foreffective design education. It is aninvestment in the future.

Thinking on design education in the 1970sand 80s was inevitably influenced by theintellectual currents of the period. This wasa time of intense speculation about thenature of human creativity and the factorsthat had allowed humans to spread theirmaterial culture throughout the globe.Flexibility was seen as a unique element,marking humans off from other species.When faced with new situations, humanswere able to use a kind of ‘generalpurpose’ intelligence that enabled them torespond in novel and effective ways. Thisability – seen as the key aspect of humanintelligence – was commonly, butnevertheless somewhat naively, referred toas ‘problem solving’. Not surprisingly,design activity was, at a high level ofgenerality, quickly identified as a type ofproblem solving.

However, the idea demanded furtherrefinement before it began to have

explanatory or illuminative power. Themain puzzle was that although designactivity certainly seemed to address andeven solve some economic, social andmanufacturing problems, it did not comeup with a single unique or ‘best’ solution.For example, attempts to solve theproblem ‘a space for family living’ resultnot in a single ‘perfect’ house design but ina multitude of responses representing, infact, different balances of the prioritiesinherent in the requirement: ‘a space forfamily living’. Moreover, the designsolutions proposed and built in differentcultures and in response to differenteconomic and technological resourcesdiffered dramatically. The same could besaid for everything designed and made byhuman beings.

These ‘problems’ - better understood as‘ill-defined states of affairs’ – are ones,which have a range of viable solutionsrather than a single perfect outcome. Theyhave usefully been tagged ‘wickedproblems’. Characteristically in the case ofwicked problems, the problem definition isincomplete and the problem definition mayhave to change as work proceeds. Designactivity includes not only solving theproblem but also re-defining the problemin the light of emerging solutions. In short,creative thought is applied to re-workingthe problem as well as solving it.Resolving it would be a better word to use.

It is doubtful if the full and radicalsignificance of this has even now beendigested by the design educationcommunity. Certainly it is not reflected inthe linear model of design activity thatappears to be enshrined in the EnglishNational Curriculum for Design andTechnology.

A more radical step would have been torecognise that design activity in factencompasses a number of very differentmental and physical processes including thesolution of conventional problems,resolving ‘wicked problems’, visualisationand modelling, handling tools andmaterials, studying ‘prior art’, managementand persuasion – and a host more shouldthey prove to be relevant to the particularproject in hand. At the highest philosophical


Introduction


Introduction

level it became clear that design activitywas as much about opening up newpossibilities and creating new ‘meanings’ inthe human environment as it was aboutsolving problems defined in advance.

Even with modelling (in the broadest senseof the word) established as the keycognitive element in design activity, thenature of ‘design intelligence’ and‘designerly thinking’ remained hazy.Attempts were made to look at design anddesigning through various lenses to seewhat insights other disciplines could offer.History, aesthetic theory, epistemology,sociology, psychology and cultural historyall had something to offer but to this day itremains the case that the phenomena ofdesign, the phenomena of designing andtheir impact on our lives call out for furtherstudy and explanation.

Linked to the attempt to characterisedesign activity and ‘designerly thinking’was the beginnings of an attempt to findout what children thought about designand what they were capable of designing.Two strands influenced this area ofenquiry. First, the revolution in arteducation which, during the course of theTwentieth Century, recognised the value ofchildren’s drawings and paintings for theirown sake and not simply as inferior‘apprentice’ works leading onto the properadult performance. Second, sucheducational pioneers as Froebel,Montessori and Piaget, whose workformed the often unacknowledged basisfor the reform of primary education after1945. They agreed that all children passedthrough a series of developmental andintellectual stages and that teaching andlearning should be planned to work withand capitalise on these stages. Designeducators found that they had the task ofachieving similar insights for designactivity and design awareness. Withoutsuch knowledge, curriculum planning andteaching and learning strategies could notbe constructed on a firm foundation. Thisremains a hot topic for research because itseems that policy makers have often beencontent to say what children should beable to know and do without any realunderstanding of what they are actuallycapable of knowing and doing. Put more

strongly, this is to say that educationalpolicy has been largely ill-founded – basedon the educational mythology of ‘what weall know’.

The 1970s and 80s were particularlydifficult times in Britain. Design and designeducation developed against a backgroundof relative economic and industrial decline.Old industries were closing with acatastrophic loss of jobs. It was far fromclear what would replace them. Some ofthe protagonists of design argued that itcould perform a key role in the nation’seconomic survival and renewal. A numberof politicians, notably Margaret Thatcher,were also persuaded. They argued that inessence what industry needed to do was tomake and market products that peoplewanted to buy: only more attention todesign could enable that to happen. Theargument for design education in schoolsbecame entangled in arguments aboutBritish economic success. Britain neededyoung people capable of forming a cadreof designers, design managers,manufacturers and retailers who,supported by a design-aware public, wouldput Britain back on the world’smanufacturing map.

Interestingly, few people at that junctureforesaw a further area where design wouldprove essential to economic and socialrenewal. It was far from clear in the 80sthat tourism, service industries and massmedia would later become so important orthat there would need to be environmentalrenewal on a grand scale replacing oldindustry with new international venues andhouses for an expanding middle class.

There also developed a very different –perhaps complementary or contradictoryposition and interpretation. Many teachersof Craft, Design and Technology, Art andDesign, and Home Economics werebecoming aware of the need to reform andreinvigorate their subject areas to meet thechallenges posed by a world ofconsumerism, mass media, massmarketing and emerging environmentaland social problems.

What they sought was an educationalapproach that would enable their pupils to

take part in this new world without beingoverwhelmed by it. Future citizens neededto be able to take control of their own liveswithout simply succumbing to thepressures of consumerism. In designeducation they saw a strategy for teachingand learning that was relevant to the taskof providing young people with intellectualand practical tools useful for their future inan industrialised world.

The design education movement wascaught between these two impulses andnever succeeded in resolving them. Thepressure continues unabated today.

Have these ideas, developed in the 1980s,stood the test of time? In many ways theyseem to have gained in explanatory power.Referring to them can throw light on manyof the questions that still bedevil academicand theoretical writing about design anddesign education. For example, BruceArcher’s propositions about the possiblescope of the ‘design discipline’ still providethe most useful definition of theboundaries to and topics for designresearch. As already suggested, his radicalre-definition of the field, his identificationof modelling as the essential medium fordesigning and his brilliant taxonomy, allprovide a framework or map whichresearchers and teachers in the Twenty-first century will find enormously useful.Phil Roberts’ penetrating analysis of therelationship between cognitive modelling,problem solving and design actioncontinues to go to the heart of the situationin design teaching and learning. KenBaynes’ work on the design ability ofyoung children has led to a widerappreciation of the explanatory potential ofneuroscience and the beginnings of anattempt to understand better the linksbetween design activity and the workingsof the human mind. The fact that many areunaware of this body of work continues tolead to much unnecessary and fruitlessresearch and speculation.

Phil Roberts and Ken Baynes have added abrief Chapter which indicates the linksbetween the work of the 1970s and 80s andcurrent agenda for debate. The hope is thatthis publication will have the effect ofstimulating both teachers and researchers to

make their own contributions to the theoryand practice of design and design education.

It is important to note that the ideas in thisbook were not the sole property of theRoyal College of Art. They were widelydebated at the time and were influential inshaping the future of design education. Inaddition, they had identifiable historicalroots in the Arts and Crafts Movement, theBauhaus and the European ‘child art’movement. In the immediate post-waryears, Herbert Read’s and Tom Hudson’srevolutionary approach to art and designeducation helped to change whathappened first in art schools and then inschool art departments. A more officialdimension came from the EngineeringCouncil, The Design Council and the RoyalSociety of Arts. The Open Universityplayed a very active role in thedevelopment of design theory. Influentialvoices at that time included Nigel andAnita Cross, Norman Potter, ChristopherJones, Peter Green, Colin Ward and PatrickNuttgens. Design magazine, edited byJohn Blake, provided an excellent forumfor news and discussion. It becamecommon ground that general educationshould pay more attention to practicalskills and knowledge, particularly in thefields of design, environment andtechnology.

However, these ‘top down’ influences wereprobably less important than the grassroots efforts of specialist subject teachersand advisers. State schools in theMidlands, particularly Leicestershire(where Bernard Aylward providedvisionary inspiration), took the lead increating ‘design departments’. They weresupported by particular individuals inteacher training, notably at HornseyCollege of Art. Later other institutionsjoined in, particularly LoughboroughCollege of Education, Goldsmiths’ Collegeand Roehampton Institute.

During the course of events the RoyalCollege of Art created a Design EducationUnit intended to work with practisingteachers, college lecturers and localeducation authority advisers, offering themthe opportunity to study for HigherDegrees. The Unit was short-lived, killed by


Introduction

other priorities during Jocelyn Stevens’time as Rector. In its brief period of activity,however, it helped to develop a cadre ofexperienced design teachers and advisers,was instrumental in launching the Art andthe Build Environment project and helpedto set up the Design DimensionEducational Trust which today continues topromote design education, most recentlythrough the Focus on Food project.

It would be easy to believe that the statusof design is now secure. There is morepopular interest in design than ever before.Manufacturers and retailers recognise notonly that design is ‘important’ to theirbusiness: they know that successful designinnovation is now a matter of commerciallife or death. Yet, on a global scale, keyproblems in the world of material cultureremain unsolved. Current levels ofproduction – supported by designinnovation – are clearly impossible tosustain. In school, design education maybe on the curriculum but it is doubtful thatthe teaching and learning on offer reallyreflects the radical nature of design anddesign education and, therefore, itspotential power. The core problemremains. Design is recognised as importantbut its nature as a creative activity, culturalas well as technological, is poorlyunderstood. It is precisely in this area thatthese texts should prove useful.


Introduction

This paper can be regarded as the

foundation document for the work which

took place at the Royal College of Art

during the 1970s and 80s. It was

presented in a number of different forms

at conferences and seminars and formed

the Preface to the Design in General

Education report that the RCA delivered

to the then Department of Education and

Science in 1976.

In it Archer proposed ‘Design’ as the

missing segment of education to be placed

alongside Science and the Humanities.

‘Modelling’ is identified as the medium for

designing and a comprehensive taxonomy

is set out for the design field. To this

radical and fundamental material we have

added a set of closely related definitions of

design and designing which also

underpinned the RCA approach.

The world of education is full of anomalies.No definition or categorisation or form ororganisation devised for one purposeseems to remain valid when applied toanother purpose. Few educationaldefinitions are watertight even whenexamined in their own terms. Take thatextraordinarily durable expression, ‘thethree Rs’, for example. It is very widely heldthat when all the layers of refinement andcomplexity are stripped away, the heart ofeducation is the transmission of theessential skills of reading, writing andarithmetic. This expression is internallyinconsistent, to begin with. Reading andwriting are the passive and active sides,respectively, of the language skill, whilstarithmetic is the subject matter of thatother skill which, at the lower end ofschool, we tend to call ‘number’. So theexpression ‘the three Rs’ only refers to twoideas: language and number. The first idea,language is referred to twice and thesecond idea, number, is referred to once.Moreover, the word ‘arithmetic’ ismispronounced as well as mis-spelled,giving the impression that the speakertakes the view that the ability and thenecessity to do sums is somehow culturally

inferior. If challenged, most who use theexpression would deny they intended anysuch bias, but aphorisms often betray acultural set. Explicit or implied denigrationof Science and numeracy in favour of theHumanities and literacy was certainlywidespread in English education up to andbeyond the period of the Second WorldWar, and was the subject of C P Snow’sfamous campaign against the separation of‘the two cultures’ in 1959. The two culturesmay be less isolated from one anotherthese days, and may speak less slightinglyof one another, but the idea that educationis divided into two parts, Science and theHumanities, prevails. There are manypeople, however, who have always felt thatthis division leaves out too much. Art andcraft, dance and drama, music, physicaleducation and sport are all valid schoolactivities but belong to neither camp. Thereis a substantial body of opinion, not onlyamongst teachers but also amongst groupsoutside that profession, which holds thatmodern society is faced with problemssuch as the material culture problem, theecological problem, the environmentalproblem, the quality-of-urban-life problemand so on, all of which demand of thepopulation of an affluent industrialdemocracy competence in something elsebesides literacy and numeracy. Let us callthis competence ‘a level of awareness ofthe issues in the material culture’, for thetime being. Under present circumstances, itis rather rare for a child who isacademically bright to take art or craft orhome economics or any of the other so-called ‘practical’ subjects having a bearingon the material culture to a high level in thefourth or sixth forms. Universities andprofessional bodies do not usually acceptadvanced level qualifications in thesesubjects as admission qualifications fortheir courses, even where the course, suchas architecture, engineering or even, insome cases, art and design, is itselfconcerned with the material culture. It isreally rather an alarming thought that mostof those who make the most far-reachingdecisions on matters affecting the materialculture, such as businessmen, senior civil


The Three Rs

The Three RsBruce Archer

servants, local government officers,members of councils and publiccommittees, not to mention members ofparliament, had an education in whichcontact with the most relevant disciplinesceased at the age of thirteen.

A third area in educationThe idea that there is a third area ineducation concerned with the making anddoing aspects of human activity, is notnew, of course. It has a distinguishedtradition going back through WilliamMorris all the way to Plato. When SaintThomas Aquinas defined the objects ofeducation in the Thirteenth century headopted the four Cardinal Virtues of Plato(Prudence, Justice, Fortitude andTemperance) and added the three ChristianVirtues (Faith, Hope and Charity). Thesehave a quaint ring in modern English, butPlato’s virtues, rendered into Latin by SaintThomas Aquinas, were taken to meansomething quite specific and ratherdifferent from their modern Englishinterpretations. To Saint Thomas AquinasPRUDENTIA meant ‘being realistic,knowing what is practicable’. JUSTITIAmeant ‘being ethical, knowing what isgood’. FORTITUDO means ‘beingthorough, knowing what iscomprehensive’. TEMPERENTIA meant‘being economic, knowing when to leavewell enough alone’. It is no co-incidencethat in our own day Dr E F Schumacher, inthe epilogue to his book Small is Beautifulquotes the four cardinal virtues of Plato asthe basis for the socially and culturallyresponsible use of technology in themodern world. Certainly the craft guilds,who bore a major responsibility for thegeneral education of the populacefollowing the Renaissance, took the viewthat a virtuous education meant learning toknow what is practicable, what is good,what is comprehensive and what isenough in a very broad sense. It is acurious twist in fortunes that when thecraft guilds lost their general educationalrole somewhere between the Fourteenthand Eighteenth centuries, it was the rathernarrow, specialist, bookish universities,academies and schools which had been setup to train priests to read and translate thescriptures which became the guardians of

what we now call general education. Nowonder our education system came to bedominated by the Humanities. When SirWilliam Curtis, MP, coined the phrase ‘thethree Rs’ in or about 1807, he placed anemphasis on literacy which reflected thevirtual monopoly which the church thenhad in the running of schools. I had an oldgreat-aunt who protested fiercelywhenever the phrase ‘the three Rs’ wasmentioned. She swore that Sir William hadgot it all wrong. The three Rs were:

1. Reading and writing2. Reckoning and figuring3. Wroughting and wrighting

By wroughting she meant knowing howthings are brought about, which we mightnow call technology. By wrighting shemeant knowing how to do it, which wewould now call craftsmanship. Fromreading and writing comes the idea ofliteracy, by which we generally mean morethan just the ability to read and write.Being literate means having the ability tounderstand, appreciate and value thoseideas, which are expressed through themedium of words. From reckoning andfiguring comes the idea of numeracy.Being numerate means being able tounderstand, appreciate and value thoseideas that are expressed in the language ofmathematics. It was from literacy that therich fabric of the Humanities was woven. Itwas from numeracy that the immensestructure of Science was built. But what ofwroughting and writing? It is significantthat modern English has no word,equivalent to literacy and numeracy,meaning the ability to understand andappreciate and value those ideas which areexpressed through the medium of makingand doing. We have no word, equivalent toScience and the Humanities, meaning thecollected experience of the materialculture. Yet the output of the practical artsfills our museums and galleries, equips outhomes, constructs our cities, constitutesour habitat. Anthropology andarchaeology, in seeking to know andunderstand other cultures, set at least asmuch store by the art, buildings andartefacts of those cultures as they do bytheir literature. If the medium of doing andmaking represents a distinctive facet of a


The Three Rs

culture, then the transmission of thecollected experience of the doing andmaking facet should represent a distinctivearea in education.

The vacant plotIf there is a third area in education, whatdistinguishes it from Science and theHumanities? What do Science and theHumanities leave out? It now seemsgenerally agreed amongst philosophers ofscience, that the distinctive feature ofscience is not the subject matter to whichthe scientist turns his attention, but the kindof intellectual procedure that he brings tobear upon it. Science is concerned with theattainment of understanding based uponobservation, measurement, the formulationof theory and the testing of theory byfurther observation or experiment. Ascientist may study any phenomenon hechooses, but the kind of understanding hemay achieve will be limited by theobservations he can make, the measures hecan apply, the theory available to him andthe testability of his findings. Some sorts ofphenomenon may therefore beinappropriate for scientific study, for thetime being or for ever. Some sorts ofknowledge will be inaccessible to science,for the time being or for ever. Moreover, thescientist is concerned with theory, that is,with generalisable knowledge. He is notnecessarily competent or interested in thepractical application of that knowledge,where social, economic, aesthetic and otherconsiderations for which he does notpossess any theory may need to be takeninto account. He would regard most of themaking and doing activities of the materialas being culture outside his scope, althoughhe would be prepared to bring a scientificphilosophy to bear upon the study of themaking and doing activities of other people.

Amongst scholars in the Humanities thereseems to be less agreement about thenature of their discipline, apart fromunanimity in the view that it is quite distinctfrom Science. There is a fair consensus thatthe humanities are especially concernedwith human values and the expression ofthe spirit of man. This justifies scholars inthe humanities in studying the history andphilosophy of science, but not in

contributing to its content. There alsoseems to be a measure of agreement, byno means universal, that the humanitiesexclude the making and doing aspects ofthe fine, performing and useful arts,although their historical, critical andphilosophical aspects would still be fairgame for the humanities scholar. It isinteresting to note that writers on thescience side frequently mention technologyand the useful arts as being excluded fromtheir purview, presumably because they areonly just outside the boundary. Writers onthe humanities side frequently mention thefine and performing arts as being excludedpresumably because they, too, are only justoutside. A third area in education couldtherefore legitimately claim technology andthe fine performing and useful arts,although not their scientific knowledgebase (if any) or their history, philosophyand criticism (if any), without treading onanyone else’s grass.

The naming of the partsClearly, the ground thus left vacant by thespecific claims of Science and theHumanities extends beyond the bounds ofthe ‘material culture’ with whose pressingproblems we began. The performing artsare a case in point. There are other areas,such as physical education, which have notbeen mentioned at all. It would betempting to claim for the third area ineducation everything that the other twohave left out. However, we should stick toour last, if I may take my metaphor fromthe doing and making area, and clarify thequestion of education in the issues of thematerial culture. Any subject that relateswith man’s material culture mustnecessarily be anthropocentric. A disciplinewhich claims, as some kinds of science do,to deal with matters that would remaintrue whether man existed or not, would beruled out from our third area. Materialculture comprises the ideas that govern thenature of every sort of artefact produced,used and valued by man. Those ideaswhich take the form of scientific knowledgewould belong to Science. The historical,philosophical and critical ideas wouldbelong the Humanities. What is left is theartefacts themselves and the experience,sensibility and skill that goes into their


The Three Rs

production and use. If the human values,hopes and fears on which the expressionof the spirit of man are based are sharedwith the Humanities, the striving towardsthem, and the inventiveness that goes intothe production and use of artefacts, is anecessary characteristic of our third area.Any discipline falling into this area musttherefore be aspirational in character, and,to take them clearly out of both theScience and the Humanities fields, it mustbe operational, that is to say, concernedwith doing or making. Under these tests,how do the subjects ordinarily left out bythe traditional Science/Humanities divisionfare? The fine arts, which in schools can beexecuted in a variety of materials such asceramics and textiles as well as throughthe medium of painting and sculpture,clearly fall into the third area. In the usefularts, woodwork and metalwork wouldusually qualify. Technical studies aresometimes conducted in such a way thatthey are not actually concerned with doingand making, and therefore may or may notrank as Science, instead. Similarlyenvironmental studies might or might notfall into the third area, according to theirmanner of treatment. Home economicspresents a problem. Taken as a whole,home economics is clearlyanthropocentric, aspirational andoperational, and therefore falls centrallyinto the third area. In practice, however,home economics may be taught in schoolsthrough the medium of individual subjectsranging from needlecraft taken as fine artthrough home-making taken as useful artsto nutrition taken as science. So homeeconomics, too, may fall into Science, theHumanities or the third area, according tothe manner of treatment adopted. Outsidethe bounds of the material culturealtogether are the other subjects explicitlyleft out by the first and second areas.Amongst the performing arts, music mightqualify as anthropocentric, aspirational andoperational. So might drama and perhapsdance. So might gymnastics, the way it ispursued these days, but probably not theother areas of physical education. But thisis going too fast. Any number of objectionscan be raised and counter-argumentsoffered in respect of many, but perhaps notall, the subjects I have mentioned asbelonging or possibly belonging to an

alleged third area in education. The point Iwanted to make is simply this. Thejustification for the nomination of a thirdarea in education lies not in the existenceof subjects which do not fit readily into thedefinitions of Science and the Humanities,but by the existence of an approach toknowledge, and of a manner of knowing,which is distinct from those of Science andthe Humanities. Where Science is thecollected body of theoretical knowledgebased upon observation, measurement,hypothesis and test, and the Humanities isthe collected body of interpretiveknowledge based upon contemplation,criticism, evaluation and discourse, thethird area is the collected body of practicalknowledge based upon sensibility,invention, validation and implementation.

The naming of the wholeThis leaves us with the problem of findingthe correct title for the third area. The term‘the Arts’ would be ideal, if the expressionhad not been appropriated by, and usedmore of less as a synonym for theHumanities. Plato would not have objectedto ‘Aesthetics’, but that has taken on aspecial and distracting meaning in modernEnglish. ‘Technics’ has been used, and is inthe dictionary, but has not proved verypopular in educational or common use. Aterm which has gained a good deal ofcurrency especially in secondary schools inEngland and Wales, is ‘Design’, spelt witha big D and used in a sense which goes farbeyond the day-to-day meaning whicharchitects, engineers and otherprofessional designers would assign to it.Thus Design in its most generaleducational sense, where it is equated withScience and the Humanities, is defined asthe area of human experience, skill andunderstanding that reflects man’s concernwith the appreciation and adaption of hissurroundings in the light of his materialand spiritual needs. In particular, thoughnot exclusively, it relates withconfiguration, composition, meaning, valueand purpose in man-made phenomena. Wecan then go on to adopt, as an equivalentto literacy and numeracy, the term ‘designawareness’, which thus means ‘the abilityto understand and handle those ideaswhich are expressed through the medium


The Three Rs


The Three Rs

of doing and making’. The question of thelanguage in which such ideas may beexpressed is an interesting one. Theessential language of Science is notation,especially mathematical notation. Theessential language of the Humanities isnatural language, especially writtenlanguage. The essential language ofDesign is modelling. A model is arepresentation of something. An artist’spainting is a representation of an idea he istrying to explore. A gesture in mime is arepresentation of some idea. Everyoneengaged in the handling of ideas in thefine arts, performing arts, useful arts ortechnology employs models orrepresentations to capture, analyse,explore and transmit those ideas. Just asthe vocabulary and syntax of naturallanguage or of scientific notation can beconveyed through spoken sounds, wordson paper, semaphore signals, Morse code

or electronic digits, to suit convenience, sothe vocabulary and syntax of the modellingof ideas in the Design area can beconveyed through a variety of media suchas drawings, diagrams, physicalrepresentations, gestures, algorithms – notto mention natural language and scientificnotation. With all these definitions in mindit is now possible to show the relationshipsbetween the three areas of humanknowledge according to the diagram inFigure 1.

The repository of knowledge in Science isnot only the literature of science but alsothe analytical skills and the intellectualintegrity of which the scientist is theguardian. The repository of knowledge inthe Humanities is not simply the literatureof the humanities but also the discursiveskills and the spiritual values of which thescholar is the guardian. In Design, the

HUMANITIES

SCIENCE DESIGN

language

notation modelling

history

philosophy

social science

tech

no

log

y

ph

ysic

al

scie

nce

use

ful

art

s

literary arts

performing arts

fine arts

Figure 1. Proposed relationships between Humanities, Science and Design


The Three Rs

repository of knowledge is not only thematerial culture and the contents of themuseums but also the executive skills ofthe doer and maker. This is very nearlywhere we came in. For all sorts of reasons,although the collected body of artefactshas been valued by scientists and scholars,if only as subjects for their own kind ofpost hoc scholarship, the collected body ofexecutive skill in the Design area has not.Both of C P Snow’s two cultures have beencondescending towards the executiveaspects of the material culture. Hence,perhaps, British society’s failure to giveadequate social, political and intellectualsupport to its own manufacturingindustries, but that is another question.Lack of scholarly regard for practical skillsand the subjects associated with them isunquestionably widespread in Britisheducation. One of the consequences of lackof scholarly regard is a lack of scholarlyeffort. Astonishingly little work has beendone to achieve understanding of designphenomena, design sensibility, the act ofinvention, the theory of modelling, thenature of judgement or the character ofskill. Even the most centrally relevantprofessions, such as architecture andengineering, have done almost nothing todevelop an understanding of their ownskills, judgement and inventive activity.They have relied on Science for their facts,upon the Humanities for their history andphilosophy, and on progressively lessrigorous and less lengthy apprenticeshipsfor their skills. Consequently, teachers ofDesign subjects at secondary level inschool and at undergraduate level inuniversities have had nothing like thesupport from scholars at professional andpost-graduate level that their colleagues inScience and the Humanities enjoy. Withlittle in the way of curricula, knowledge, orteaching materials to work on, it is smallwonder that the vicious circle of ill-informed secondary school teaching,barely relevant school examinations, fewprescriptions of passes in theseexaminations as university admissionqualifications, low-grade work atundergraduate level, little scholarly work atpostgraduate level, little handed on in theway of curricula, knowledge or teachingmaterial to secondary level, is repeated.

Tasks for researchIt is sobering for those of us who areactually engaged in postgraduateresearch and teaching in the Design areato record that the most strenuousattempts to break that vicious circle havebeen made by secondary school teachersof design-related subjects. Themovement which led to the introductionof the term ‘Design’ to describe this areaof education and which caused theMinister of Education and Science tocommission my department’s enquiryentitled Design in General Education wasa grass-roots movement. It was startedby teachers of art, craft and technicalstudies, and to a lesser extent byteachers of home economics and others,all of whom were gravely concernedabout the relevance of education to themajor problems facing mankind today –that is, to the quality of life, the urbanenvironment, the use of physicalresources and so on. It is even moresobering for some of us who teach orpractise mainstream design activities torecord that it was not until these samesecondary school teachers, and theeducational philosophers who work withthem, asked fundamental questions, thatwe looked seriously at the knowledgebase for our own activities.

I have set out the span of the knowledgebase, for the organisation of my ownresearch programmes, as follows:

Design technology:

The study of the phenomena to be takeninto account within a given area ofapplication;

Design praxiology:

The study of the design techniques, skillsand judgement applied in a given area;

Design language (modelling):

The study of vocabulary, syntax and mediafor recording, devising, assessing andexpressing design ideas in a given area;

Design taxonomy:

The study of the classification of designphenomena;


The Three Rs

Design metrology:

The study of the measurement of designphenomena, with special emphasis on themeans for ordering or comparing non-quantifiable phenomena;

Design axiology:

The study of goodness or value in designphenomena, with special regard to therelations between technical, economic,moral and aesthetic values;

Design philosophy:

The study of the language of discourse onmoral principles in design;

Design epistemology:

The study of the nature and validity ofways of knowing, believing and feeling indesign;

Design history:

The study of what is the case, and howthings came to be the way they are, in thedesign area;

Design pedagogy:

The study of the principles and practice ofeducation in the design area.

Of these sub-disciplines, design praxiologyand design language (or modelling)probably need to be studied within thefield of design research itself. It seemsunlikely that any sub-disciplines of Scienceor the Humanities would make muchcontribution to them. Design technologycan really be lifted straight from existingsub-disciplines elsewhere. Workers in thedesign research field would need to leanheavily on scholars in the Humanities forhelp in design philosophy, epistemologyand history. Science undoubtedly holds thekeys to design taxonomy, metrology andaxiology but a great deal needs to be doneto adapt existing theory to design needs.Design pedagogy may also needdevelopment beyond existing theory.Design research methods themselves willalso require original development, sincethere are subjects for enquiry and kinds ofknowing which do not lend themselves toconventional scientific or speculativeenquiry. But this is going too far into thetheory, of the theory, of the teaching, of thepractice, of getting to grips with reality! Let

us get back to the questions with which webegan.

A virtuous education today, as in StThomas Aquinas’ day or in Plato’s day, isone which teaches everybody, not justbudding practical people, how to knowwhat is practicable, what is good, what iscomprehensive and what is enough.Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all our localgovernment officers, politicians, managingdirectors, merchant bankers, shopkeepers,shoppers and men and women in whitecoats or blue overalls could be taught justthat? Sir William Curtis did us a greatdisservice when he coined the phrase ‘TheThree R’s’. He was said to be illiteratehimself, and never did a hand’s turn ofanything practical, but made a vast amountof money out of selling ships’ biscuits, sohe presumably knew his ‘rithmetic. Itseems that my old great-aunt had the storymore or less straight. Wroughting andwrighting (or ‘industrial arts’) were still inthe curriculum in Sir William’s day, albeitat a pitiful level. These never grew to attainthe scholarly regard earned by the literaryand numerate arts because the guilds hadgone, and the universities that governedthe examination system had grown from adifferent tradition. Those of us who work inthe Design area of higher education have achallenge and a responsibility. In the faceof mankind’s present needs, we have togenerate for the benefit of secondary andundergraduate education a knowledgebase neglected for 170 years.

Some definitionsIt is important to attempt to define moreprecisely than hitherto the meaning of‘Design’ and hence of such terms as‘design awareness’ and ‘design education’.It was soon evident that the way in which‘Design’ was defined would control theway in which its educational role could beenvisaged. There appeared to be three jobsthat any definition or set of definitionsneeded to do. Firstly, it was necessary togive substance to the notion, long andwidely held that there was a ‘third area’ ineducation besides Science and theHumanities and also to distinguish it froma possible ‘fourth area’ devoted to Affairs,or the ‘operational arts’. Secondly, it was


The Three Rs

necessary to retain a further moreparticular definition to describe thosestudies in school which involved childrenin design activity and which many peoplealready called ‘design education’. Finally, itwas important to retain a coherent linkbetween what educationists thought of as‘Design’ and what professional designersbelieved design to be about.

The definitions provided here are based onan existing measure of agreementamongst educationists but attempt to carrythe synthesis a stage further.

They have been prepared primarily to servein the context of general education. They arenot necessarily applicable in an unqualifiedway to specialist further or higher educationor to the professional practice of design.They have been framed, nevertheless, withthe intention of extending the commonground between the various interests inschools, such as the teaching of art, design,craft and technology, home economics andso on, whilst maintaining maximumcompatibility with common usage andprofessional usage.

1. The term ‘Design’ can be used in anacademic or very general sense todescribe one of the broad divisions ofman’s concern, competence andknowledge, thus Design is the field ofhuman experience, skill, understandingand imagination that is concerned withthe conception and realisation of newthings and events and particularly withman’s appreciation and adaption of hissurroundings in the light of his materialand spiritual needs. In particular, thoughnot exclusively, it relates withconfiguration, composition, meaning,value and purpose in man-madephenomena.

2. The term ‘Design’ can be used tocategorise a range of activities anddisciplines within the educationalspectrum, to distinguish them fromother ranges such as those of ‘Science’and ‘Humanities’, thus: the Design areaof education embraces all thoseactivities and disciplines which arecharacterised by being anthropocentric,aspirational and operational; that is, that

are man-related, that have a value-seeking, feeling or judging aspect, andthat have a planning and making aspect.

Disciplines such as art, handicraft, homeeconomics and technical studies tend toform the broad middle ground of theDesign area in schools.

3. The term ‘design’ can also be used in arange of more operational and morelimited senses, as indicated by thedefinition in the Concise OxfordDictionary: design, n. Mental plan;scheme of attack; purpose; end in view;adaption of means to ends; preliminarysketch for picture etc; delineation,pattern; artistic or literary groundwork,general idea, construction, plot, facultyof evolving these, invention.

Design, v.t & i. Set (thing) apart forperson – destine (person, thing) for aservice; contrive, plan; purpose, intent;make preliminary sketch of; draw planof; be a designer, conceive mental planfor, construct the groundwork or plot of.

4. The term ‘design’ in the educationalcontext can also be qualified to define itas an area of man’s concern, thus:Design awareness is the consciousnessof the issues of the material culture andof the products and the values ofplanning and making, together with theability to understand and handle ideasrelated with them.

5. It can also be qualified to define it as anarea of man’s competence, thus: Designactivity is the exercise of the set of skillsuseful in planning, making andevaluating.

6. The whole field of design in educationcan therefore be defined at any of theselevels of generality, thus: Designeducation is the set of formal andinformal experiences affecting andeffecting the transmission of the body ofideas, information and technique whichconstitutes the received state ofknowledge of the material culture, andof the arts of planning and making at agiven level of generality, and within agiven field of relevance.


The Need for Design Education

This paper was prepared for a Department

of Education and Science Conference in

1973. It sets out the broader context for

design education and relates the argument

for it both to environmental and to

economic concerns.

Archer argues that British education has a

long history of neglecting forms of

learning relevant to contemporary

industrial society. They are despised as

practical or vocational. This has

undermined the nation’s ability to respond

creatively to the challenges of pollution

and depletion of resources, social change

and new technologies.

The paper introduces the idea of ‘design

awareness’ as something analagous to

literacy or numeracy. Archer states ‘It is

my sincere conviction that a massive

broadening and deepening of design

education in secondary schools today is

overwhelmingly the most important

urgent need for the survival as well as the

happiness of mankind’.

In June 1970, the Governments of theprimary countries attended the UnitedNations Conference on the HumanEnvironment in Stockholm. This was animportant event. It was importantbecause it was the first formalrecognition of the weight of the evidencewhich had been accumulated by theenvironmental lobby over a period ofyears. Not the least aspect of itsimportance was the fact that theGovernments who attended thisconference had to prepare formal papers,set up study groups, create Civil ServiceDepartments, and create the machinery tohear and react to future representationson problems relating to the environment.In this country four official preparatorypapers were commissioned by theSecretary of State for the Environment.

They are:Human Habitat – How do you want to live; Pollution – Nuisance or Nemesis; Natural Resources – Sinews for Survivaland Organisations and Youth – 50 MillionVolunteers.

The studies contained in these fourpublications reflect, although not exactly,the four great crises facing mankind: thecrisis of overpopulation; the crisis ofpollution; the crisis of the depletion ofnatural resources and the crisis of control.

I do not propose to rehearse thearguments first set out by the Club ofRome on population, pollution anddepletion of resources, but I do want toquote just a couple of paragraphs fromNatural Resources – Sinews for Survival.

Paragraph five says: ‘We (that is theworking party responsible for thispublication) have been driven by theevidence we have assembled to theconclusion that to devote our resources tothe achievement of the highest possiblegrowth rate as conventionally measured isno longer desirable. Many of the naturalresources of the world, particularly thosethat are peacefully available to Britain arefinite. Even with a steady population theymay well be insufficient to provide the rawmaterial for the rate or the kind of economicgrowth and increased affluence which isalmost universally assumed to be desirablefor the next hundred years. If the populationcontinues to grow as forecast, someresources are probably insufficient for thenext 50 years, that is, within the lifetime ofmost young people. It has been argued thatexhaustion of our finite resources can befaced with equanimity because the freemarket will solve the problems, rising priceswill restrict demand and encourage thesubstitution of other materials. We do notagree that this process is necessarilyreliable, but in any case it is the qualitativeaspect of the problem that leads us to theconviction that intervention is essential’.

The Need for Design EducationBruce Archer



A little further on – paragraph 14:‘Nevertheless there are urgent things thatwe can and must do. We must abandonthe paramount goal of the affluent society.We must check the stimulation of artificialdemands that needlessly consumeresources. We must get away from thebelief that constant change and novelty arenecessarily good and that last year’sfashions and styles are not merely out ofdate, but automatically inferior becausethey were created a year ago, and we mustencourage our manufacturers to abandonbuilt-in obsolescence and to producegoods which will last longer and bedesigned in such a way that the resourcesthey tie up can be readily recovered andused again. We do not suggest any of thiswill be easy. It implies a profound shift inthe values which our society has adopted.It will demand the co-operation andeducation of consumers, manufacturersand Governments, and the re-framing ofour system of taxation to provideincentives and deterrents’.

So for a lot of people the economic caseand the resource case is made. But one ofthe crises I mentioned was not dealt with,except rather indirectly in the book onOrganisation and Youth, that is the crisis ofcontrol. The crisis of control exhibits itselfin the challenges to authority, theabandonment of traditional values, and thedisenchantment with establishedinstitutions which is a feature of our time.The crisis of control also exhibits itself inthe massive mistakes which have beenmade – the thalidomide disaster; therecurring economic crises; the closingdown of mines and railways subsequentlylearning that they have to be re-opened;the sitting and abandonment ofmotorways; the sitting, resiting andabandonment of airports. The crisis ofcontrol exhibits itself in the deterioration ofthe quality of the urban environment formany people and in the stress, theviolence and suicide, by which people mayindirectly express their protest.

And on top of these four crises, there is adilemma of crises; that is, the ironic factthat the more we do to control theproblems of population, pollution and thedepletion of resources, the more restriction

we put on personal freedom, on personalparticipation, on the diversity of values andtherefore the larger and more irksomebecome the institutions, which we arealready somewhat disenchanted with. Onereason why these crises are difficult toresolve and could be impossible to resolve,is that the profound shift of values whichwas referred to in Sinews for Survival istending to attack instincts which are verydeep in our animal natures. The animalinstinct for growth and expansion is aninstinct to build up resources against thecoming of possible famine, pestilence anddeprivation by other species. Our animalinstinct for exploration is always to allowour young men to climb mountains, toexplore, because there may be anothergreen valley the other side of the mountainwhich we may need one day. Our instinctfor exploration causes us to scatter inorder that some members of our speciesmay be in some safe havens so that whenthe pestilence comes there will be somesurvivors to redevelop the species.

The law of nature is not ‘survival of thefittest’, the law of nature is ‘random mutationand survival of the fittest’ and it is part of ourbiological nature to mutate in order thatthere shall be some variants who, will be fitto survive under changed conditions. It maybe that these deep instincts underlie a lot ofwhat we do. The community at large, forexample, seems to be willing to support or atleast to tolerate artists, scientists,philosophers, eccentrics in almost anythingthat they desperately wish to do, providedthat they seem to be able to do it againstalmost overwhelming odds and seem tohave some chance of actually succeeding. Sothe conventional wisdom is that what can bedone should be done. If a man can climb ahigher mountain this is admirable and wewill provide him with the minimum he needsin order to carry out an expedition; if it ispossible to run a faster mile we will applaudhim. If it is possible to split the atom we willgive him the apparatus to do so. This is partof a satisfaction of our primeval urges. So ifwe were to say now, in the light of modernenvironmental crises, ‘there are no moregreen valleys’, ‘growth is evil’, ‘change,novelty and newness are not necessarilygood’, ‘exploration is anti-social’,‘consumption is contra-indicative for



survival’, we are attacking instincts which areat the mainsprings of our animal life, at themainsprings of our biological function, andcan only cause deep perturbation and stress.

But the case for design education does notrest here on the ecological issue of humansurvival. The same two decades which haveseen the community’s attitudes to growthand change turn through 180 degrees fromthe pursuit of expansion to the questioningof expansion, from the pursuit of invention tothe questioning of invention, have also seendesign philosophy and design practicesimilarly profoundly shaken. The confidenceof the designer in his own role as practicalartist concerned with form, proportion,texture, colour and problems ofconveniences and function; secure in hisattitudes as to good taste; happy in thepursuit of rules like form should followfunction, truth to materials and other Platonicideals; clear in his relationship to the objectof his creation, has been steadily eroded.First of all by the very proper turning fromconcern with systems, turning from concernonly with form to the whole of the design’sfunction in form, production, distribution andso on; then by a very proper recognition thathe is only a member of a coalition ofcommon interests in which there are a wholelot of other people contributing. These areproper dilutions of his interest, but his oldconfidence has also been undermined by theemergence of pop styles, kitsch styles,revivalist styles, fun styles of design whichare now being executed by respected,professional, successful designers, acceptedand applauded by people of taste yet whichare quite contrary to all rules of good formand good taste which he has hithertolearned. The designer is also being shakenby the evident deterioration in relationsbetween designer and society. The term‘planner’ is now used as a pejorative term.The work of modern architects is mainlydisliked. There is a general feeling that apartfrom some styles of design, ‘what they theprofessional designers want to give us, is notwhat we the people like’. This dissolution ofthe old philosophies, the undermining ofconfidence, is so serious that both thearchitectural profession and the industrialdesign profession are at this momentengaged in a serious study of their role, theirtraining and their effectiveness.

From 4 to 7 May 1973 at EdinburghUniversity, the International Congress ofSocieties of Industrial Design (ICSID)conducted an enquiry at whichsociologists, historians, philosophers,scientists and civil servants all got togetherwith designers to question why it is thatthe standards and values of designersappear to have diverged so seriously fromthe standards which are practised by bothindustry and government and appear to bedesired by the ordinary population. It is noaccident that whilst the design professionshave been concerned with broadening andreappraising the education of designers,those who have been concerned with theeducation of the consumer have beensimilarly preoccupied by the competenceof society to appreciate and comprehendits own needs and wants. Thediscriminating designer needs adiscriminating consumer if he is to be ableto bring off a design act at all. Moreoverthe public in the shape of local councillors,civil servants, cost accountants and so onare playing more decisive roles in what isactually done in design. Urban renewals,sitting of airports, civic design, interiordesign, the character of catering and so onis very often actually decided, not bydesigners or home economists, but bylocal councillors, local government officersand so on. And there is more and moredemand for popular participation indecision making in planning andarchitecture. It is here I think we are gettingclose to a moral or philosophical case for anew and more general approach to designin education.

The notion of design as an activity which isseparable from making seems to date from1700. From about 1840, according toRaymond Williams in his book Culture andSociety 1780-1950, the concept of designwas bound up with a philosophical conceptof proper appreciation of things beautiful,but in those terms the pursuit of beautywas for ethical reasons rather than purelysensual reasons. When Ruskin and Morris,and later the Bauhaus School, wereformulating principles of good design, andwhen later the ideas of fitness-for-purpose,form-follows-function, truth-to-materials,economy-of-means were being expressed,it was always for fundamentally



metaphysical reasons rather than forpractical reasons. Form-follows-functionwas intended to be symbolic of truth aswell as logical. Truth-to-materials was anexpression of an ethical attitude as well asbeing prudent. Economy-of-means waselegant as well as thrifty. The metaphysicalreason has always been more importantthan the practical reason from the designphilosopher’s point of view. Indeed in itsmiddle history the symbol often ousted thereality. One saw designers from theBauhaus onwards designing objects whichwere perfect spheres, cubes or cylinderseven though the cost of producing themwas excessive and the convenience inhandling them was poor. Today we see theadman’s image ousting both ethicalsymbol and practical reality. The presentcrisis of conscience is tending to throwdesigners back to the ethical.

Thus, the case for a new approach todesign in general education rests on twoissues of major importance: first, the needfor public sensibility to environmental,planning, social and aesthetic problems,and secondly, the need for a fundamentalvalue base in general education to restorelost confidence. The purposes andproblems of design education of thegeneral population is analogous to literacyand numeracy. Literacy as we understoodit is more than just the ability to read,although obviously it must begin there.Literacy includes the ability to appreciateand to be enlarged by literature. Similarlynumeracy is more than just the ability tomanipulate numbers, although obviouslyone must begin there. Numeracy includesthe ability to appreciate and be enlargedby mathematical logic. Similarly designeducation is more than just the ability todraw or possess plastic sensibility. It ismore than the ability to produce andcomprehend two-dimensional and three-dimensional information. It is more thansimply acquaintanceship with the contentsof ‘Which’ magazine. If we want toconstruct a pedagogic equivalent toliteracy and numeracy, meaning the stateof being able to appreciate and beenlarged by design, then I think we have tohave a better approach. I am going to usethe term ‘design awareness’ for designliteracy in this special sense. You may ask

‘What are the components of designawareness?’ Clearly art is part of it. Artoffers perception, sensibility and handlingof emotional meaning. But aestheticsensibility extends to other things.Athletics and home economics are aspectsof dexterity. Clearly science is part ofdesign awareness, that is to say knowledgeof facts, knowledge of laws, knowledge ofrelationships. But knowledge andreasoning of the type we see in scienceextends also to mathematics, to language,to philosophy. The approach to designawareness in my view is more than justbuilding bridges or understanding theinterfaces between art and craft, scienceand languages. In my belief designawareness contains two additionalelements: one of which is basic to theprimitive nature of man; and one is at thevery limits of our modern intellectualability to reason.

The primitive element is concerned withthat quality which distinguishes man frommost of his fellow creatures, that is thecapacity to fashion tools to adapt theenvironment to suit himself, instead ofadapting themselves to their environment.The advanced additional element isconcerned with his capacity to imposequalitative considerations upon quantativeconsiderations; to impose aesthetic,spiritual and ethical elements uponphysical, economic and rational elements.

Modern conditions made the ordinary manin advanced technological society quiteincompetent to fashion his own tools. Weuse electric drills but we could not cutourselves a reed whistle. We usethermostatically controlled central heating,but do not know how to survive on amountainside. The car worker on aproduction line could not build himself achair that would be both light enough tocarry and strong enough to support him.We have lost our personal control over theenvironment. We have lost a large part ofour tool making confidence and we havelost a large part of our folk knowledgeabout nature, survival, and dexterity. Wehave put layers of delegation and layers ofmaterial between us and what we want todo. Perhaps the ecological irresponsibilityof society is one product of this lack of



direct contact between a man, theindividual, and the natural elements.Perhaps the urge to do it yourself, the urgeto get away from it all is an instinct to getback to our tool-making nature.

The crisis which calls into question alleducation, not just design education,relates in a similar way to what I called thesecond distinguishing element of designawareness, and that is our capacity toimpose qualitative considerations uponquantitative considerations. Aesthetic,ethical, social, ideological considerations,(the subjective and qualitative), are notonly different from economic, technicaland physical consideration, (the objectiveand quantitative) but they also subsumethem. C. West Churchman, Russell L.Ackoff, who are both distinguishedoperational research scientists and PeterMedawar, distinguished medical scientist,have all three in recent publicationsasserted that all so-called hard scientificfact rests upon value judgements, and notthe other way round. Even so-called hardscientific facts rest upon an agreementabout the suitability of the axioms whichunderlie the theories, on the relevance ofthe evidence which is admitted intoconsideration, about the appropriatenessof the measuring techniques, about thequality of truth in proofs. Moreover, it isnot the objective facts of systems that leadus to accept or reject them. It is not thewidth, the strength, or the cost of themotorway which causes us to accept it orreject it, it is its convenience, itsintrusiveness, its comfort, its beauty, itsugliness. It is the subjective attributeswhich cause us to accept or reject, not theobjective physical properties. And it is theunfortunate case that man’s ability tomanipulate, reason with and operate withthe quantitative has completely outrun hisability to manipulate the qualitative. Thefact is that quantitative relationships aresimply a special case of relationships. Thetools are there in New Maths which is themathematics of relationship, in logic, inthe techniques of debate, the techniquesof judgement.

So the question of design education is partof a much larger and more profoundquestion of education in the qualitative. It is

no accident that all four of the StationeryOffice publications call for an importanteffort at environmental education. How DoYou Want to Live and 50 Million Volunteers,each contain a whole chapter on the needfor education. Nuisance of Nemesiscontains 31/2 pages on the need foreducation. Sinews for Survival has only apage but the whole book is about thequestion of public re-education. I just wantto quote a couple of paragraphs from theone called Human Habitat – How Do YouWant to Live.

The Working Party said ‘Rural studies, artand craft have been taught in some schoolssince the beginning of the century, butnowadays they are clearly inadequate as abasis for the study of the total environmentin an overwhelmingly urban society. But itis doubtful if the real purposes ofenvironmental education can be fulfilled bythe development of a new subject along thelines of rural studies but calledenvironmental studies, complete with itsown concepts, techniques and values andtaught like history or geography orlanguages at every level of education fromthe primary school to the ResearchInstitute. But environmental educationcannot be just a matter of teaching peopleto see the environmental aspects of theirparticular subject. They must also learnjudgement and discrimination. Education ispre-eminently a matter of realising values.Environmental education should be part ofthe moral and aesthetic education of thehuman being as a whole’.

I would have added home economics tothat list of traditional departments, to formthe basis of a new and comprehensiveapproach to design education.

So the focus of design education insecondary schools is therefore not justsimply the setting up of joint projectsbetween the art room and science lab. It isnot simply co-operation between thegeography class and handicrafts. Theemphasis of design education is not to tryto make everyone a first rate or secondrate creative artist or craftsman, but to tryto give everyone a good grounding indesign sensibility analogous to literacyand numeracy.



If we are to succeed I think that we have tobe very careful to pitch our response atmore than merely creating interdisciplinaryprojects. We should not allow the idea ofdesign education to be run away with byoverenthusiastic art and craft teachers whosee it as a rebirth of traditional craftteaching (though we could do with some ofthat). I think there is a danger we couldhave failed to have touched some of thesedeeper fundamentals. We will have failed torespond to the crisis of control, to the crisisof ecology, and we will have failed toinfluence events.

On the other hand if we pitch our responseat too profound a level, at the level ofphilosophical conjecture, at the level of thediscussion of the theory of aesthetics(although we could do with some of thattoo) then we will assuredly miss the time,we will miss the tide and add to the generaldisenchantment with institutions and theirability to handle the problems of the world.

Whatever we do has got to be in full co-operation with our colleagues in teachertraining, and in environmental education,which is presumably why the Departmentof Education and Science is sponsoring thisparticular programme and it is certainlywhy I am here. It is my sincere convictionthat a massive broadening and deepeningof design education in secondary schoolstoday is overwhelmingly the mostimportant urgent need for the survival aswell as the happiness of mankind.


Of Models, Modelling and Design: An Applied Philosophical Enquiry

This paper was written by Phil Roberts

some time after the dissolution of the

Design Education Unit and following the

introduction of Design and Technology as

a subject in the English National

Curriculum. However, it usefully brings

together a number of illuminating

concepts which Roberts first developed in

the 70s and 80s. It also shows decisively

that NC Design and Technology was – and

is – a far cry from these broader

interpretations of Design Education.

One of the most useful aspects of the

paper is a model viewing designerly

activity from the perspectives of the user

and the observer as well as the designer

and maker. This is characterised as the

‘transitive’ mode of design and the model

shows how users and observers shape

their environment and give it meaning

through a series of activities that exactly

correspond with those of the designer and

maker. In design educational activity the

child should be encouraged to experience

both those modes and all these roles.

The paper also discusses the nature of

problem solving in relation to design

activity and introduces a very useful set of

diagrams intended to help practitioners

move beyond simplistic notions of

problem solving. The thrust here is to

characterise designing as acting in and on

the world and to show that it is essentially

concerned with making value judgements

about changing states of affairs.

The discussion in this paper is derivedfrom a strand in a series of enquiriesconducted into design phenomena andinto design educational activity. It isintended as no more than a contributiontowards an agenda for more specificenquiry into the nature and functions ofmodels and modelling, and towards theconstruction of a practitioners’ theory.The enquiry was phenomenological in its

general orientation and, moreparticularly, applied philosophical in itsapproach.

Let me first locate the discussion: it is indesign education; more specifically, it is inCurriculum Studies and, even morespecifically, it is in the area of DesignCurriculum Studies. If ‘design education’ isa term which is indicative of potentialparadigmatic change, it is understandablethat design educational theory isembryonic. Theory construction is at thestage only of the formulation of models. Buta theoretic framework is in sight. Ifturbulence is symptomatic of paradigmaticchange, or of paradigmatic competition, theabsence of a generally accepted languageof discourse – or even vocabulary – whichwould enable practitioners of differentspecialist communities to talk with, asdistinct from past, each other is similarly nosurprise. In the formulation of newparadigms, innovators necessarily constructtheory and a new language: the paradigmsthat practitioners ‘inhabit’, and by means ofwhich indeed they exist, are to a largeextend predicated on specialist languages.But the languages of differingconstituencies are distinctive even thoughthey may employ the same words. It is nosurprise that the members of ‘old’ traditionsand the constructors of new ones havedifficulty in making contact with each other;the surprise would be if it were otherwise.

The need to develop a shared meta-language of discourse across the areas ofdesign practice is also evident. The needfor sustained scholarly and research effortis also apparent. There is, for instance, atthe heart of the National Curriculum (NC)Design and Technology documentation amodel of activity which has the characterof a procedural model. Because of thelegislative status of the Education ReformAct and its subsequent Orders – as distinctfrom its academic or theoretic well-foundedness – it is possible that the centralmodel will become part of a new

Of Models, Modelling and Design: An AppliedPhilosophical EnquiryPhil Roberts



orthodoxy. Yet it is an inadequate andinappropriate model which may thereforefurther hinder understanding of howdesignerly activity, in fact, occurs and ofhow design thinking and technologicalability develops. The relations between themodel and the realities to which it is inreference are not well represented in theNC documentation. A simple model at ahigh level of generality together with arange of complementary lower-levelmodels – the latter having greaterspecificity and stringency – would havebeen more appropriate. This, however, isto run too far ahead of the discussion; theNC Design and Technology documentationsimply illustrates or adds to the scholarlyagenda rather than resolves it.

It is convenient to use questions as aframework for this discussion. The first is:What human capacity is central to theconduct of design activity? Alternatively put,the question might be: How is it possible todesign at all? (which is a matter verydifferent from a concern with a theory orwith a procedural model of how to design).

Central to the act of designing is thecapacity to conceptualise and representideas, aspects of present realities andfuture possibilities. ‘The mind’ (we say)makes use of a variety of forms ofknowing, and makes transformationsbetween the modes of conceptualisationand representation. Envisaging-what – orcognitive modelling – is externalised andmanifested in such familiar media andforms as words, drawings, plans, maps, 3-dimensional models, and prototypes. Workcarried out in the Design Education Unit ofthe Royal College of Art indicatedsomething of the nature and status ofcognitive modelling:

The conduct of design activity is madepossible by the existence in man of adistinctive capacity of mind, analogouswith the language capacity and themathematical capacity. This is thecapacity for cognitive modelling. Aperson acting in the role of designer orappraiser of designs forms images ‘in themind’s eye’ of things and systems as theyare, or as they might be, and evaluatesthem and transforms them so as to gain

insights into their structure and into thelikely quality of fit between alternativeconceivable configurations and theinteraction of perceivable requirements(…) Cognitive modelling is not limited tospatial configurations. Aspects such ascolour, texture, sound, flavour andanything else relevant to the system canbe imaged and manipulated. Cognitivemodelling is independent of language orsymbol systems, but when appropriate,the concepts modelled can be translatedinto or supplemented by language ornotational terms. The image is usuallyexternalised through models andsimulations, such as drawings, diagrams,mock-ups, prototypes and, of course,where appropriate, language andnotation, or it can be embodied in theconstruction of or the enactment of theemerging responses. Theseexternalisations capture and makecommunicable the concepts modelled (1).

Cognitive modelling does not have thestatus of language as a linguistician woulddefine language; there are too manyuntested propositions for such a claim tobe sustained. With that caveat in mind,however, ‘cognitive modelling’ canconveniently be referred to as the essentiallanguage or cognitive medium of designingand, by extension, of design educationalactivity. Hence it might be reasonable toexpect to find explicit references in coursedescriptions to the development of thecapacity for cognitive modelling. Illustrativeinstances of such expectations within thedescriptions of courses, learning objectivesmight be, for instance:

… to develop the ability to present andrepresent ideas in two-and three-dimensional forms and media;

… to develop the ability to maketransformations between the symbolicforms in which an idea is conceived andthe forms in which it might best berepresented;

… to develop the ability to choose anduse the symbolic form and media mostappropriate to the purpose, the task, andthe audience.



A scrutiny of several hundred coursedescriptions in art, CDT, technical/engineering drawing shows neither anysuch intention nor expression – eitherimplicit or explicit. And this finding appliesboth to single subject courses and acrossdesign-related subject courses. In view ofthe centrality of cognitive modelling indesign-related activity this is interestingbecause surprising.

This absence for explicit attention andintention can be discerned, along withother issues, through a reflection onmodels and modelling. It is convenient toconsider a model that is to do with designeducational activity: it is a model within thelanguage of discourse: that is, in thediscourse about designing and itsassociated phenomena.

The model, Figure 2, is derived fromschools-based practice. It uses fourperspectives on the design-educationalactivity. These are deployed by means offour role-views: those of the designer, themaker, the user, and the observer. Figure 1describes the roles:

The four role-views are intended to provideworking perspectives towards the bettercomprehension of design andtechnological activity and of cognitivemodelling.

DESIGNER

OBSERVER

USER MAKER

Designing as intentional activity, focusingon needs, wants, aspirations: designingas acting-in-the world facilitated through

cognitive modelling

Figure 1. Four Roles (the Designer, the Maker, the User, the Observer) offering

complementary perspectives on learning-through-designing



The childacting in and on the world

asthe USER and the OBSERVER of

design activity: that is the participant user of design

The childacting in and on the world

asthe DESIGNER and the MAKER

indesign activity

identifies situation requiring resolution: requires situation – the ill-defined problem – he/she is in to be changed

The designer is placed in, or accepts, a situation – anill-defined problem – where some change (to otherthan present conditions) is ‘needed’ (probably)

leads to a sufficient statement of the problem(s) -the ill-defined problems;not a solution: as open-ended as possible;statement avoids specifying particularsolutions/responses

leads to a sufficient statement of the problem(s) the ill-defined problems; not a solution: as open-ended as possible;statement avoids specifying particular solutions

in going from the beginning to arriving at thisstage, the original state of affairs has been changed (probably, usually) to one that is moreacceptable

in going from the beginning to arriving at thisstage, the original state of affairs (represented inthe ill-definded problem(s)) has been changed(probably, usually) to conditions that are moreacceptable

…constraints on capacity to obtain (expense, availability, size, maintenance,ease of use, whether (it) will perform to acceptable standards): reveals alternativesand the USER’s criteria

…constraints on freedom and ability toachieve (skill, cost in time, finance,materials, facilities, user’s requirements):reveals alternatives, and probable acceptablesolution to both the USER and the DESIGNER

uses, evaluates against identification and specificationof the ill-defined problem(s)

considers possible solutions to problem(s)and…

considers possible solutions to problem(s)and…

chooses chooses

plans

makes ‘mock-up’

tests

makes prototype

tests, evaluates

delivers

buys

analyses situationarticulates the problem(s)requiring solution/resolution

analyses situationarticulates the problem(s)requiring solution/resolution

what is required? needed? wished for? absent?what is the nature of the ‘mis-fit’?what is the primary function required? what if anything ‘needs doing’?

what is required? needed? wished for? absent?what is the nature of the ‘mis-fit’? what is the primary function required? what, if anything, ‘needs doing’?

Figure 2. A model towards understanding the nature of design educational activity



Figure 2 – itself, incidentally, a model –represents cognitive modelling as activeprocesses and functions which are within,related to, and derived from the design act.As it happens, this model makesconsiderable reference to artefacts, but thisis not to suggest that artefacts are, orshould necessarily be, the principaloutcome or the principal object of theactivity. In this case, the significant statusof artefacts is as a possible means towardsachieving change, rather than as anecessary end. This is to make adistinction between means and ends whichought to be important with regard toeducational purposes. Making use of sucha model, then, is not to assume thatartefacts shall be made, in order for theactivity to count as designerly activity. Inthis context the model is, rather predicatedon the notion that designing is essentiallyconcerned with change (or, better, withchanging); or with bringing about someintended change both in the agent of theactivity and ‘out there’.

The centrality of bringing about change asone of the identifying features of designingand of design-educational activity is worthpursuing. Figure 2 presents a view ofdesign activity as having a transitive form:that is the perspective represented by theUser and the Observer.

… All design activity involves continualappraisal and reappraisal of themeritoriousness of existing realities andalternative propositions being handled.

… a transitive form of the activity iswholly or largely concerned with theappreciation of states of affairs and withchoosing and deciding, rather than withthe creation of things and systems. Allhuman beings rely heavily on cognitivemodelling in both these forms for thepursuit of their everyday activity. (2)

This transitive mode of design activity isunder-valued – indeed, is barelyrecognised at all – in mainstreamdefinitions of designing, including theconceptions found within small specialistgroups of design-related practitioners. Andyet it represents better the more generalcase of design experience and activity than

does the familiar model which isessentially concerned with the making (butnot always with the designing) of artefacts.Appreciation of the transitive mode is ofenormous radical significance; and theoperational implications would bebeneficial. For instance, a particular part ofthis significance is in the potential for thecomplete transformation of so-called‘consumer education’ in relation to, first,the priority often attributed to the makingof tangible artefacts in the design-relatedschool curriculum subjects and, second,the experience of design activity –predominantly transitive for the majority –in the lives of adults. Even more significantis the potential for developing a largerconception of design in schools throughthe formulation of a model at a higherlevel of generality: it would have the effectof changing the perceived exemplarystatus of some established and familiarcurricular activities.

The modelling of Figure 2 readilyaccommodates the production of physicalartefacts – and distinguishes betweenmeans and ends in so doing – but thefunctioning of design activity that itrepresents does not entail them, nor theirmaking. This is so not only in the transitiveform but also in the ‘making’ dimension.When acting in the role of ‘the designer’and ‘the maker’, the child is not disallowedfrom ‘changing his mind’ away from an (atsome earlier point) anticipated artefact inhis or her evolving conception andrealisation of the state of affairs whichgives rise to the activity.

The phenomena, and the actions andevents, that it attempts to provide a modelfor (incidentally rather than of) are notexclusive towards feelings or emotions.Indeed, the intention is to be inclusivetowards them. It is a skeletal peg intendedto make design experience morecomprehensible and transparent. Onefunction is to offer the possibility of aninterpretative perspective on experience.This does not exclude other possiblefunctions within pedagogy: of, for instance,helping pupils understand better theoperational aspect of design activity. Orhelping pupils to gain a better sense of aphenomenon, which essentially is not



susceptible to description in naturallanguage. The modelling may appear to bedescriptive in character but rather thanbeing primarily descriptive – or, as asuperficial reading might even suggest,isomorphic – of the activity, any apparentdescriptiveness if towards developing thepupils’ analytical synthesising and reflexivecapacities, as mediated in design activities.There is, then, no intention to articulate an‘identity’ or ‘correspondence’ model: it is,potentially, informative of the activityrather than representative. That is, the keyfunction is translation: between thelanguage of discourse and thedevelopment of operational capability.

In any event, to pursue this latter pointmore generally, the test of adequacy or ofusefulness of a modelling mediated innatural language in the field of design-educational practice does not necessarilyconsist in its ‘imitation’ of ‘the facts’. Tosubscribe wholeheartedly to ‘imitation’might be to miss part of the metaphoricnature of language and, particularly, thefunctions of metaphor in modelling.Furthermore, to concentrate on ‘imitation’might be to risk a distortion of thephenomena as experientially enacted. It isa modelling for: to be persuasive or useful,a model must differ from the subjectphenomena. Models lose life, and as aconsequence much of their value, as theygain in identity. Were this not so, thestructure of design phenomena would beas obvious as that of the model (makingthe model redundant). This seems banalonce stated, but the widespread failure torecognise it, and hence its significance iswell illustrated in the naïve following of‘the design line’, or ‘the design loop’, orthe four attainment targets of the NCDesign and Technology model, as thoughthey provided recipes or descriptions ofthe structure and the structuring ofdesigning educational activity.

In other words, the failure to understandthe nature, the status and functions ofmodels has resulted in widespreadconfusion between the logic of designingand the logic of the language which isused to refer to or describe designing.Alternatively put again, there is awidespread failure to distinguish between

the phenomena of designing and the meta-language of discourse, in which themodels are located. One of the strongcriticisms of the models of design activityin education, including the one at the heartof NC Design and Technology, is that theypurport to be general but are, in factparticular. (The NC model, it can beargued, sits uneasily between the twolevels, and satisfies neither; the effect isconfusion.) It is, however, possible toexpress a model at a high level ofgenerality. Before that, it is necessarybriefly to remind ourselves of thedistinctive nature of designerly thinkingand technological activity. The character ofthe action is distinguished by its treating,and conjunction, with ‘ill-definedproblems’.

…(Design) is a problem-centred activity,but it is distinguishable from some othersorts of problem-solving activity by thefact that it is chiefly concerned with ‘ill-defined problems’. In this context, theterm ‘problems’ refers to the presentlyexisting state of affairs; it does not referto the statement of requirements which a(possible) thing or system is expected tomeet. Nor does the term ‘solution’ referto the design arrived at. (…) Designproblems are described as ‘ill-defined’because there is no way of arriving at aprovision description merely by thereduction, transformation or optimisationof the data in the requirementspecification. By the same token, it israrely possible to determine whether ornot the finished design is ‘the correct’,‘the only’ or ‘a necessary’ answer to therequirements. It must usually bepossible, of course, to establish whetheror not one ‘proper’ answer to therequirement is better or worse than someother ‘proper’ answer. Where suchdoubts do not exist, the problem is not‘ill-defined’ and might therefore havebeen resolvable by scientific ormathematical methods rather thandesignerly methods. (3)

With that in mind, it is possible to conceiveof a model at a high level of generality. Ifwe consider the question, ‘When is a(design) problem?’ we can respond: ‘Aproblem consists in a state of affairs, in



which we feel some unease or discrepancyor incompatibility’. The ‘problemstatement’ consists in a description of thatstate, and it will be, inevitably, anapproximate or tentative description; thus:

discrepancy

If a problem =

Figure 4 develops the notion:

condition of discrepancy orincompatibility ortension

the condition describedas its resolution =an acceptable degree ofclosure of the gap

mis-match incompatibility

Figure 3. ‘When is a problem?’

Figure 4. From problem-state to resolution

{



The central notion is that design andtechnological activity is concerned withchanging (and notice the gerund); or withthe achieving of some change. It might bethat a change is required in circumstances‘out there’; it might be some change in thesensibility, or the capability, or theknowledge of the agent of the activity. Butchange does not entail the production of things, or systems, or environments: theessential focus of designing is on ends, notmeans. Most models relating to designeducational activity which specify thatproducts shall be produced have more todo with means than with ends. That is notillegitimate; but means and ends shouldnot be confused or conflated.

In an educational context, it is thenpossible to construe design andtechnological activity as continuingactivity, with educative activity construedas a continuing process; contained in theaddressing a series of overlapping statesof affairs grounded in pupils’ livedexperience.

Figure 5. Design and technological activity as learning: problem solving as continuous

process contained in focussing on overlapping states of affairs



Figures 3-5 provide a model upon whichthe model provided in Figure 2 may beimposed. Figure 2 may have some initiallyuseful pedagogic functions, but it is morespecific than that of 3-5.

In another context, Toulmin noted thatsome novel method of representation isalways at the centre of discovery, helpingus to apprehend the phenomena in a newand more fitting manner. (4) That couldsuggest that one of the functions ofmodelling can be characterised ascognitively heuristic. On such a view,

Figure 2 tends towards a ‘translation-correspondence’ model, translatingbetween sets of concepts – those ofnominal definitions and those ofoperational functioning.

This reflection on the nature of modellingin natural language and the functions ofmodels may be taken just a little further.Our experience of misunderstandings in,for example, social affairs is a sharpreminder that the words of naturallanguage have no clear cut boundaries to‘their’ meanings. Wittgenstein said:

…We might, by the explanation of aword, mean the explanation which, onbeing asked, we are ready to give. Thisis, if we are ready to give anyexplanation; in most cases we aren’t.Many words in this sense then don’thave a strict meaning. But this is not adefect. To think it is would be like sayingthat the light of my reading lamp is noreal light because it has no sharpboundary. (5)

Our use of words of natural language (inmodelling) can bring into focus ‘parts’ oraspects of our experience, the clarity ofwhose meaning – a functioning of thefocussing – diminishes as the focus blurstowards the edges. But one man’s clearmeaning can be another’s blurred focus,even within apparently shared experience.In principle, perhaps it is possible toachieve hard conceptual boundaries in anartificial language. The point is this:language cannot represent, unequivocally,our experience; but it can be, and is useful.If natural language were found

unequivocal in the meanings carried by it,or if it were found lacking in tension orambiguity, it would be found so only bymembers of a speech community whoshared the same narrow set of activities,and whose activities were confined to actswhose meanings were those contained bythe language’s constitutive definitions.Hence, the comparative unequivocality ofthe formal language of scientific theories.But this absence of ambiguity, or thisintended inflexibility, is the feature thatmakes such formal language unusable bypeople who are untrained in that language,or who work with subject matter theboundaries of which cannot be confined.The capacity of many possible meanings isintrinsic to evolving natural language: theunfolding form holds blurred boundaries,which is to say possibilities for meanings.And much of designing is, by definition, todo, literally with the making of meaning.Polysemy is intrinsic to and necessary inform-making. The problem, then, ofdescription (in relation to meaning-making)perhaps lies in more appropriately‘matching’ one polysemous form(language) against another polysemousform (designing), both of which aresituated in an infinity of possibilities.

On this view, the call by some teachers fora ‘definitive design vocabulary’ – meaningdefinitions without ambiguity – rather thanfor a useful meta-language, ismisinformed. (In passing, this also offersan insight into the utopian ambition ofspecifying what shall be the ‘knowledgecontent’ of NC Design and Technology.)But in any event if to learn is to beengaged in the active making of meaning,then learning activity, in general, has apolysemous quality; and the plea by someteachers which appears implicitly to saythat this should not be the case appears asa challenging and curious proposition.

However, this is no argument at all for nottrying to represent our experience asprecisely as the limits and limitations oflanguage usage will allow: we learn totreat with those difficulties as well as livewith them. So, we can attempt to achieve aminimal yet firm skeleton but properly(and especially at this stage of designtheory development) be less parsimonious



towards its substance in the interests ofthe potentialities and actualities ofmeaning making.

The modelling of Figure 2 presents aconception of design activity as a sub-setof human intentional activity: of action inand on the world. It also expresses thenotion that learning is a function of takingaction; that designerly activity is to do withbringing about change; that designeducational activity is concerned also withbringing about some change in thecapability, the sensibilities, or theawareness in the agent of the activity. Andat the heart of the activity is theengagement of the capacity for cognitivemodelling. Might reflection suggest anymatters of significance for researchers,scholars and for teachers? There areseveral lines of response.The first arises from the documentaryevidence provided in course descriptions.That is, the development of cognitivemodelling ability is not explicitly addressedby teachers of design-related subjects. Thestatus, the nature and the functions ofmodelling (and of models) appear to bepoorly understood and appreciated. Doesthat matter? The answer must be: Yes. Thequality and status of the teaching of mostof the techniques of modelling in designare much less than their centrality deserve,both within the field and in the public mind(as evidenced in the ‘back to the Three R’stendency). And the teaching of modellingis certainly less well coordinated than itcould be. Partly as a consequence, therelations between the modellingconventions employed by, for instance, artteachers and CDT teachers, are lessmutually appreciated than they might be.But the absence of a theoretic base formodelling holds back the incorporation offurther modelling techniques and usefulconcepts that might be taken from studiesin artificial intelligence, systems theory,and cognitive psychology. The lack ofexplicit attention to and knowledge ofmodelling holds back the development ofthe design curriculum and designpedagogy.

There is also a major strand of enquiry topursue via the history of ideas. There is atendency to think of design as being in

some special sense ‘visual’. Theconception and the expression of ideas,however, do not employ only one symbolicform. We may conceptualise in one modeand express in another – hence thepossible objective, expressed earlier, ofdeveloping the ability to maketransformations between differentsymbolic forms; and of developing theability to choose and use whicheversymbolic form and media might be mostappropriate to particular purpose, task andaudience. This is an area of philosophical-scholarly and operational importance. Topresent designing as being necessarilypredicated on the capacity for cognitivemodelling is to say also that designcapability is a function of the capacity tounderstand a physical environment inabstract ways; and that is to accept theintellectual status of design. Therelationship between the construing of anenvironment and the preparation of objectsis a long-standing problem inepistemology. An alliance of enquirybetween the philosophical and theoperational might lead towards a responseto our opening question: How is it possibleto design at all?

Another line of enquiry that may perfectlywell be pursued by practitioners also arisesfrom reflection upon Figure 2. This line ofenquiry would be to do with design-relatedcurriculum subjects in relation to designeducational activity. It can be summarised.

First, if the capacity to act intentionally isconstrued as being central to designing(and to design educational activity) it isnecessary to recognise differing modes ofaction. That is, action in and on the worldmay be overt or covert. Secondly, it isnecessary to distinguish between mindfulactivity and mindless activism. The allegedsuperiority of any single and particularmode of manifestation of action is not tobe taken as self-evident: the criterion ofsuperiority would be in some relation tothe task, purpose, function, context, andtheir contingency. More specifically, fourpoints follow.

One, overtly witnessable modes andunwitenssable modes are complementarymodes of action. The grounds then for



asserting that the overt mode shouldnecessarily be regarded as the exemplar,rather than the covert and transitive, areopened up for re-appraisal.

Two, in acting in and on the world, neitherthe making nor the using of tools isentailed. In a weak sense, it could be saidthat tools – when and if used – function asinstrumental extensions of man’sintentional activity. In a stronger sensehowever, tool-making and tool-usingextend man’s cognitive capabilities: that is,they are not to be understood as simplemodifications of natural objects.

Three, the making of tangible artefacts isnot entailed – except in those areas ofactivity which are constituted in artefactachieving, e.g. furniture making. But eventhere, there are exceptions to thisgeneralisation, and even there thetransitive mode is not necessarily inferiorto the overt mode which is frequentlydisplayed through artefact production. Interms of curriculum subjects, a recognitionwould lead to the proper recognition ofCraft, Design and Technology (CDT) as alimited case. Alternatively put, CDT doesnot provide the paradigm case ofdesigning, nor does art. This is not ofcourse a value judgement: it is aconceptual issue.

Four, while it is important that man makesthings and systems, and while it isimportant to understand howcompetencies in the making of things andsystems may be enhanced, there is a priorquestion (or, at the least, an accompanyingquestion): Why, or whether, man makes oracts. That is, the prior question is to dowith mindful action. The narrowlyoperational, no matter how complex orsimple, is insufficient by itself – andparticularly with regard to educativeintentions.

All this means that the often asserted orsometimes supposed exemplary status ofsome particular school subject is not easyto sustain. The brief summarisingconclusion is that the development of thedesign capacity is central to would-be-educative activity. The capacity to act withintention is realised and manifested in the

functioning of cognitive modelling. Intreating with real-world ill-defined states ofaffairs, cognitive modelling engages,employs and is constituted in differingmodes of conceptualising, symbolising,and presentational systems, according tothe subject phenomena, the ‘task situation’,and the required functions or purposes.The operations encompassed by the term‘cognitive modelling’ are necessarily andinevitably complex, and transformational.

References

1. Bruce Archer and Phil Roberts, Internalpaper, Design Education Unit, RoyalCollege of Art 1979

2. ibid

3. ibid

4. Stephen Toulmin, The Philosophy ofScience, New York: Hutchinson 1953

5. Wittgenstein, The Blue and BrownBooks, Oxford: Blackwell 1975, p 27.



The establishment of the Design EducationUnit coincided with a period of increasingGovernment concern about the content ofthe school curriculum and the levels ofattainment reached by children and youngpeople. There were a number of initiativesintended to improve matters. Historically,these can be seen as moves towards theemergence of a National Curriculum. TheUnit contributed papers that set out toclarify the nature of learning in design andto describe the criteria, objectives andcompetencies that might be expected atthe different levels of general education.Two papers are reprinted here.

The papers remain topical because theypresent alternative ways of characterisingdesign education and design educationalactivity. In both cases, a determined effortwas made to avoid being subject specific.It was firmly believed that the Design‘segment’ did not belong to and could notbe delivered by any single existing schoolspecialism. The second paper reprintedhere, Competencies in Design and

Technological Understanding, isparticularly interesting because it attempts,with remarkable brevity, to navigate thedifficult boundary between design andtechnology. This was, and remains, an areaand interface requiring further analysis:first, philosophically, in pursuit of clarifyingthe epistemology of Design (and itsdistinctiveness); second, to considerwhether ‘technology’ implicitly andunwittingly refers to the promotion ofparticular ‘making’ technologies; and third,to pursue exploration of its implication forcurriculum practice and content.

It is important to note that these papershad a role very different from the NationalCurriculum. They were not intended to beprescriptive but to promote further debateand, indeed, independent initiatives byteachers and other practitioners.

Paper OneCriteria and Objectives forDesign Education

IntroductionThis paper attempts to define criteria andobjectives for design education in order toprovide a checklist of pupil and studentcompetences which will assist HMI,irrespective of subject discipline, to focusspecifically on design education whenvisiting schools and colleges. Although thebroad criteria are common to both generaland vocational education, the moredetailed criteria may be more specific toone phase than another.

The FoundationsDesign education is concerned withlanguage, envisaging and the technologyassociated with making. The ability toenvisage, or construct, conceptually,models of existing or invented reality is aninborn human capacity. Observations ofchildren suggest that they can erect such amodel in the minds eye and, in varyingdegrees, manipulate it predictively. Thereis much evidence that this facility candevelop, with appropriate education, tobecome a highly sophisticated cognitiveprocess in which many related factors canbe manipulated concurrently.

As a sophisticated mastery of wordsfacilitates linguistic thought, so aknowledge and mastery of the means tounderstand and depict visual form canstrengthen and extend this capacity toenvisage. The refinement of such a modelrequires the facility to hold it in an externalmaterial form, such as a drawing orphysical model. This can enable the visualthought to interact with the external recordso that the idea is further refined anddeveloped.


Criteria, Objectives and Competencies

Criteria, Objectives and CompetenciesBruce Archer

Phil Roberts

Profound connections exist between themodels we envisage in our minds andwhich our senses inform, verbal language,the non-verbal languages of art, gestureand number and communication bydrawing, diagram-making and simulating.Through the interaction of these processesand languages, pupils and students learnto internalise experience and externaliseand capture design thinking.

PrimaryIn primary schools the curriculum needs toinclude applications of practical reality andopportunities to handle and understandbasic materials. In mathematics andscience, for example, there is a need forexperimental methods in which the sensescan confirm or challenge the predictions.Authentic materials need to be used sothat pupils can feel natural forces directlyand not rely solely on diagrams ortheoretical language. An example of anunauthentic material would be the use ofpolystyrene blocks to construct an arch asa demonstration of the force of gravity. Inhistory or humanities the study of someimportant aspects of the history oftechnology could be invaluable, such asthe history of prime movers. In homeeconomics, the taste, smell and look offood made in class can have aestheticvalue, and the menu and its recipes be aform of design brief. In language work, theuse of metaphor in relation to sensoryexperience can help children to hold andcommunicate abstract ideas. If theexperience arising from the use ofmaterials is to be usable later it needsreflection upon by means of words. Amajor purpose of language, shared by anumber of subjects including art andEnglish, it to make experience tangible.

Early SecondaryThere is a need for the teachers of allsubjects to recognise what each cancontribute to design education and tomake this known to the pupils. Inparticular, the art department will need todemonstrate the relevance of artexperience to design awareness.

There are important links between art,craft, design, technology and language.There is plenty of evidence to suggest thatthe richer the experience provided for thepupils across a range of disciplines thericher their output.

It is also important that teachers shouldmake pupils aware of the criteria by whichtheir work is valued. Critical appreciation ofeach others work should not be left untillater on in the secondary school. Pupilsneed to acquire over a period of time asense of values and learn to make choices.There should be opportunities for pupils tomake judgements and practice thatelement in design education of learningfrom failure.

Common Broad CriteriaIn design activities there are relatedelements; these include practicalexperiences with materials and thethinking activity involved; an appreciationof the world of design; informed criticaljudgement about design; attitudes toinformation and knowledge which arehelpful to the design process.

1. Practical experience should involve arange of materials and should bestructured, systematic and disciplined.

2. Thinking activity: creative, organisedthinking and its application; progressingfrom abstract ideas to a practicalsolution of a design task. This shouldoften include research into thedevelopment of a design brief.

3. Pupils and students should becomeinformed about the world of design,both in terms of existing design practiceas well as the history of design.

4. Pupils and students should know thecriteria by which they and their teachersevaluate their work, and should know ofways in which they may describe theirown response to the work of others.



5. Pupils and students need to developattitudes to information and knowledgewhich aid designing. They need to knowwhat to find out, what sources toexplore and what depth of knowledge isrequired for particular purposes. Equallyimportant is their willingness to searchdiligently and to incorporate relevantknowledge, including that which isinconvenient to preconceptions.

ObjectivesAmong the objectives for designeducation, the development of designperceptions is central, but in order to giveform to such perceptions some degree ofskill is necessary. There will be widevariations of skill according to the phase ofeducation.

Design perceptions

Bringing experience and judgement toconceiving and making functional forms(i.e. functioning both practically andaesthetically) through the integration ofperceiving, feeling, thinking andvisualising. This is a fundamental featureof design experience and involves twomajor elements:

1. Fitness for purpose: the ability to relate adesign to human needs and enjoymentincluding the environment, ergonomicfactors of scale and the sensibilities ofthe user. The ability to see andunderstand the formal relationshipsbetween the aesthetic components of adesign. The ability to see andunderstand functional efficiencyincluding performance (eg, economy,properties and appropriateness ofmaterials, application of energy inproduct and production process).

2. Research and development: anunderstanding that in forming a designmental connections must be madebetween items of acquired knowledge,the identified design task, thevisualisation process, the experiencegained from the manipulation ofmaterials and means of production.

Facilitating skills

The facilitating skills represent the range ofpersonal resources which give access todesign experience. These skills are ofdifferent kinds and, in varying degrees, arepresent in all learning in design.1. Task identification: the ability to define a

design task; the ability to plan anddescribe possible routes to a satisfactorycompletion.

2. Discriminatory skills: the ability toenvisage and select from a range ofpossibilities. The ability to see nuances,similarities, differences and graduations.This can be taught, and pupils/studentscan develop a body of knowledge and arepertoire of skills concerning the visual,tactile and technical judgements whichthey can apply to design tasks.

3. Practical skills: the skills of handlingmaterials, tools, machines andequipment. The sensitive control ofmaterials, requiring the understanding ofprocesses and the acquisition ofappropriate manipulative skills.Successful design depends in part onthe effective use of tools and/ormachines and equipment in relation tomaterials at a level appropriate to thetask. Pupils/students should understandhow to select appropriate materials andworking methods to achieve quality intheir work and pleasure from itsexecution.

4. Study skills: locating and selectingappropriate resources and information;seeing the relationships and possibleconnections between individual itemsand their potential use in design tasks.

5. Skills of communication: graphic, oraland written communications concernedwith the formation and sharing ofconcepts and the deployment of skills.The pupils’/students’ knowledge of andfacility with a working vocabulary; forexample, the words associated withform, function and appearance or thetechnical terms associated with tools,materials, equipment and processes.



Knowledge and content

1. Pupils/students seeing their own work inrelation to existing design practices andthe history of design.

2. Factual knowledge: pupils/studentsbeing informed about other areas ofknowledge, such as the arts, technology,science, mathematics and thehumanities.

3. Moral and ethical considerationsconcerning the relationship between thework of the designer and the user.

4. Pupils/students knowing the criteria bywhich they and their teachers evaluatetheir work.

Attitudes and values

1. The ability to find value and pleasure indesigning, and the stamina to maintainmomentum over the necessary periodfor the completion of a design task.

2. Attitudes which ensure open-mindedness in the search for relevantknowledge and information andwillingness to apply findings.

3. The ability of pupils/students to makeinformed critical judgements about theirown designs and those of others.

4. The ability to make informedjudgements concerning the role andfunction of the professional designer.

5. The recognition of the designer’s role asa member of a design and productionteam.

6. The recognition of the economicimportance of good design.

A Checklist of Pupil and Student

CompetenciesTheir presence or absence will varyconsiderably according to the phase ofeducation.

Design perception

1. Does the work demonstrate a perceivedrelationship between the design andvarious human needs (for example,environment, ergonomics, scale and thesensibilities of the user)?

2. Does the work demonstrate a perceivedrelationship between the variousaesthetic components?

3. Does the work demonstrate anunderstanding of functional efficiency(for example, performance, economy,properties and appropriateness ofmaterials, use of energy, process ofmaking)?

4. Does the work demonstrate anunderstanding of the connectionsbetween the various components andstages in the development of a design?

Design skills

1. Can the pupil/student identify problemsand work towards their solution?

2. Does the work show skill in seeingnuances, similarities, differences andgraduations in visual, tactile andtechnical terms?

3. Is there sensitive physical control ofmaterials, tools, machines andequipment?

4. Does the work display sensitivity to thenature and qualities of materials?

5. Does the work provide evidence of theselection of appropriate materials?

6. Have study skills been acquired andused in selecting appropriateinformation and applying it?

7. Have skills of communication beenacquired and used (graphic, oral,mathematical and written)?

8. Has the pupil/student acquired a workingvocabulary (words associated with form,function and appearance or the technicalterms)? Can they communicate withthose outside their own discipline?



Knowledge and content

1. How far is the pupil/student aware of hiswork in the context of the world of art,craft and design?

2. How far is the pupil’s/student’s ownknowledge enriched by the work ofdesigners, craftsmen and artists?

3. How far is the pupil/student informedabout other areas of related knowledge(e.g., the arts, technology, science,mathematics and humanities)?

4. Is the pupil/student conscious of therelationship between the work of thedesigner and the user.

5. Does the pupil/student know the criteriaby which his/her work is evaluated?

Attitudes and values

1. Has the pupil/student an ability to makecritical judgements about his/her ownwork and the work of others?

2. Does the pupil/student reveal open-minded attitudes in his/her search forknowledge and information and awillingness to apply findings?

3. Is the pupil/student able to makeinformed judgements about the role andfunction of the professional designer?

4. Does the pupil/student find value andpleasure in designing; does he/she havethe stamina to maintain momentum forthe completion of the design task?



Paper TwoCompetencies in Design and Technological Understanding

The Assessment of Performance Unit(APU) Technology Working Group considerthat it is possible to produce a frameworkfor the identification of the competenciesthat pupils might reasonably be expectedto be able to demonstrate in Design andTechnology. The framework used identifiesthree aspects of performance: skills,knowledge and values.

The dominant feature of the design andtechnological dimension of humanperformances is the bringing together ofskills, experience, knowledge,understanding, imagination andjudgement, whatever their limitation, in theexecution of a specific task. In practice, itinvolves the integration of a complex ofactivities that are specific, inventive,effective and evaluative.

In interpreting the framework it must beborne in mind that both the acquisition ofdesign and technological understandingBY a child, and the detection of thatunderstanding IN a child, are contingent onthe child’s engagement in purposeful andcomprehensive activity.

SkillsThe skills that are used in the processes ofdesign and technological activity aredistinctive. The framework identifies fourcategories of skill: Investigation; Invention;Implementation; and Validation.

These tend to overlap and to follow oneanother cyclically and repeatedly in thecourse of design and technological activity.Taken together, they constitute the processof recognising a need and matchingavailable means with desired ends.

The skills of INVESTIGATION include theability to:-

1. Recognise the existence of a problem,which might be amenable to solutionthrough design and technologicalactivity;

2. Perceive, or identify throughinvestigation, the extent to which agiven thing of system meets the statedneed;

3. Seek out information and resourcesand/or to generate information throughobservation or experiment and to judgethe relevance, sufficiency and reliabilityof the information and resourcesobtained;

4. Employ a balance of knowledge,analytical skills and judgement inarriving at conclusions in the face of ill-defined problems.

The skills of INVENTION include the abilityto:-

1. Conjure up in the mind’s eye images ofproposed things or systems, and tomanipulate, rotate and transform thoseimages;

2. Think of alternative configurations for adesired thing or system, and to adapt,transform and select from theseconfigurations to meet given needs;

3. Externalise these images through avariety of means, such as sketching,drawing, diagram making, constructing,or the use of notation or language, andto communicate information about themto others;

4. Examine the integrity and coherence of aproduct or system idea, the degree towhich it matches its requirements andthe extent to which the requirementsthemselves are appropriately defined.



The skills of IMPLEMENTATION include theability to:-

1. Plan a practical activity and to see itthrough;

2. Select from available resources the mostappropriate energy resources;

3. Use tools, materials, appliances andappropriate energy resources;

4. Monitor and measure the effects ofoperations and to control their outcome.

The skills of VALIDATION include the abilityto:-

1. Discern the appropriate contexts for theappraisal of any thing or system and toidentify the criteria by which that thingor system should be judged;

2. Nominate the measures appropriate togiven criteria and to devise practical orlogical tests to determine theperformance of a given thing or systemin relation to them;

3. Form judgements about the balance ofmerit of a given thing or system inrespect of given criteria; to distinguishbetween different sorts of needs and toassign different degrees of importanceor priority to given needs in differentcircumstances;

4. Appraise the efficiency of a given courseof design activity.

KnowledgeThe essence of design activities is that theyseek to resolve specific practical problemsthrough the use, in an integrating manner,of a wide range of knowledge andexperience. The designer does not need toknow all about everything so much as toknow what to find out; what form theknowledge should take, and what depth ofknowledge is required for a particularpurpose. It is more important, for designpurposes, to know how a system works, ormight work, and how different knowledgedisciplines relate to each other in practice,than it is to have a depth of knowledge of asingle discipline in isolation.

Also, for design purposes, knowledgeneeds to be in such a form that it can beused to make decisions which willcontribute to the creation of a device whichdoes what is required. Scientific knowledgeas such, which is essential forunderstanding the nature of the physicalworld, is not necessarily in a form whichcan be used for design purposes.

In a certain sense it can be said that everysort of design activity is underpinned by anunderstanding of its relevant technology.Most people, however, would recognisethat some sorts of design activities aremore technological than others, in thesense that they are more reliant uponobjective information about the nature andbehaviour of materials and processesparticularly of the more resistant materialsand the more power-using processes.

One of the most important aspects of thedesign process is the way in which itcontinually calls for the making ofdecisions which require information fromother disciplines. The form in which thisinformation is needed means that thequestions which are asked of thedisciplines may be unlike those which thedisciplines themselves ask as part of theirown development. For example, althoughscientific information may be needed, theform in which it is needed effectivelyrequires the generation of new concepts –ie; Technological concepts. Three strandsof technological concepts can be identifiedas constituting the essential basis ofdesign and technological understanding.

These three strands of technologicalconcepts are:-

1. Control: knowledge of how systems,whether static or dynamic,can be created to have aspecified effect

2. Energy: knowledge of the sources,costs and forms of energy; ofmethods of storing andtransmitting energy; ofefficiency and of conversionof energy.



3. Materials: knowledge of sources andcosts of materials; of theiruseful properties andlimitations; of their methodsof being processed,manipulated and connected.

The application of the skills of designactivity (investigation, invention,implementation and validation) can becalled technological when they operate inthese concept areas. Involvement in theseactivities helps in the acquisition of theconcepts while possession of the conceptshelps with involvement in the activities.

It is demonstrable in schools that pupilsare able to use their technological conceptsat a variety of levels. However it is notnecessary for these concepts to beCONSCIOUSLY possessed by pupils beforethey can be used.

To illustrate this, the concepts of energy,energy transfer, power and powermatching may begin to be acquired by a 10year old. He can experiment with energyby storing it in raised weights andstretched or twisted elastic. He can deviseways to use this stored energy to project amissile, propel a vehicle, make a noise ormake something go round. Later he canwork out how to use his stored energy tomeet more precise requirements –maximum range, highest speed, longestduration of travel, etc. Later still he beginsto qualify his energy and begins toanticipate what will happen, his designdecisions become more mathematical. Atabout the same time, he understands thenature of energy in its different forms,mechanical, electrical, thermal etc, and, byanalogy, he begins to understand thecorrespondence of concepts in differentenergy fields.

A technological solution to a problemarising in one part of the school curriculumwill almost certainly need to draw onresources of knowledge and design skillacquired in other areas of the curriculum,and probably also require facilities for itssuccessful implementation to be providedfrom other subject areas. It is thereforeimportant to distinguish the technologicalPURPOSE, which might be provided by an

individual school subject, from thetechnological KNOWLEDGE and SKILLresources and the opportunity fortechnological DESIGN IMPLEMENTATION.

ValuesThe pursuit of design and technologicalactivity can rarely be entirely free from theexercise of value judgement. Thequestions always arise: What are the ‘right’ends to be striven towards in this case?Which would be the ‘better’ approach?What would be a ‘good’ result? Sometimesthe answers to such questions will beexpressible in terms of technical efficiencyor economic cost. Sometimes they will beconcerned with ethics, or aesthetics orsocial responsibility. The understandingthat is required of a child is the ability torecognise different sorts of valuesunderlying different sorts of problems andthe ability to apply appropriate sorts ofreasoning to the kinds of value that arerelevant. The framework thereforeidentifies five areas for assessment alongthe dimension of values:

Technical values: Economic values:Hedonic values: Aesthetic values: Moralvalues:

The pursuit of TECHNICAL VALUES mightinvolve an appreciation and application ofthe concepts of:-

1. Efficiency and the ways in which anyinput is compared with the resultantoutput;

2. Robustness; flexibility and the ways inwhich the performance of given man-made thing or system might be sensitiveto change;

3. Precision and the quality of fit and offitness to purpose, valued either for theirown sakes, or as means to an end;

4. Confidence, and the ways in which thepossible reliability or unreliability ofinformation is taken into account.



The pursuit of ECONOMIC VALUES mightinvolve an appreciation and application ofthe concepts of:-

1. The broad distinction between the ideasof use-value, intrinsic value and value-in-exchange;

2. The distinction between value, price andcost;

3. The concept of the marginal value ofone product or product variation overanother;

4. The effects of variation in supply anddemand on availability and price.

The pursuit of HEDONIC VALUES mightinvolve an awareness of:-

1. The role of vision, hearing, smell, tasteand touch in attaching value tophenomena through their direct appealto the senses;

2. The role of appetite, desire, pleasure,pain etc in the evolution of products andsystems;

3. The demands made on the configurationof man-made things and systems by thephysiology and psychology of people;

4. The importance of hedonic factors in allforms of design activity and an ability totake them into account when designingor evaluating things in the man-madeenvironment.

The pursuit of AESTHETIC VALUES mightinvolve an awareness of:-

1. The structures, proportion and coloursto be found in the natural world;

2. The structures, proportions and coloursto be found the man-made world;

3. The importance of aesthetic factors in allforms of human communication andsocial and self-expression;

4. The inter-relationship betweenworkmanship, tools and the aesthetic qualityof the resulting environment or artefact.

The pursuit of MORAL VALUES mightinvolve an awareness of:-

1. Mankind’s impact on the naturalenvironment and his growingresponsibility for its and his own futuresurvival;

2. The inter-relationship between the man-made world and religious, social,economic and political philosophies;

3. The needs of individuals in society andways of meeting them;

4. The importance of ethical values incarrying out design activity andevaluating the effects of technology.



This paper was given at an internationaldesign policy conference held at the RoyalCollege of Art in 1982. It was an attempt tobring together many of the strands ofthought that had emerged at the DesignEducation Unit. It set out to re-statefundamental propositions about design,design activity and design educationalactivity and, perhaps for the first time, torelate them directly to developments incognitive science and cultural history.

It looked at tool making and tool-using andquestioned whether these were the ‘real’originating points for design. Instead, thepaper put forward a ‘different (and larger)conceptualisation’ – that of humansmaking meaning by acting in and on theworld. The distinction remains fiercelytopical, not least in the unexamined rolegiven to the importance of ‘technology’ incontemporary education. The paper alsointroduced the concept of a ‘semanticwhole’. The idea was taken from thephilosopher George Steiner who used it todescribe the creative relationship betweenreaders and writers in a literate society.This took ‘design awareness’ a step furtherand suggested that one aim for designeducational activity should be the creationof a semantic whole between designers,makers, users and all other parties todesign activity.

The purpose of this paper is to set outbriefly some of the crucial streams ofthought that have contributed to ourpresent view of design education. It isinteresting that in Britain at least, many ofthese have first arisen in connection withgeneral education. Perhaps this is becauseit is here that philosophical andeducational issues come up most sharply.The fact is, however, that it is increasinglypossible to view design education as awhole, from primary to tertiary, and to seethat the same concerns are importantthroughout the spectrum.

The streams of thought we are dealingwith have developed first of all as anhistorical phenomenon. Many have rootsas far back as the Renaissance: some areolder still. The industrial revolutionrepresents another moment of criticalchange and upheaval. In a more immediatesense, the ideas we are dealing with haveroots in the art and design experiments ofthe 1930s, the design explosion of the1960s, the period of student revolt and thesubsequent period of retrenchment andincreasing bureaucracy. It is not ourintention to deal with the history in thispaper. That is an important piece of workthat still remains to be done. Here our aimis to look at the ‘state of the art’ as it hasdeveloped and to ask: ‘what are the ideasand issues for now and the future?’

In presenting this picture we shall draw onwork which has been done in and aroundthe Design Education Unit at the RoyalCollege of Art by ourselves and ourcolleagues.

Design capacity as a fundamental

attribute of human beings.At the outset it is necessary to distinguishbetween two diametrically opposed viewsof design and designing. These are:

1. That design is highly specialist, complexand esoteric – that particularly the act ofdesigning is something which peoplecan do only after a long apprenticeship;

2. That design ability, like language ability,is something that everyone possesses atleast to some degree.

We certainly take the second view. Webelieve it is the common sense one, borneout by ordinary experience. We hope thatin time work now beginning will show justhow children first develop a sense of suchthings as space, how they first begindeliberately to use cognitive modelling,how they first deploy tools and materials in


Design Education: The Basic Issues

Design Education: The Basic IssuesKen Baynes

Phil Roberts

a purposeful way. For the moment,however, we can recognise that in playthey do, in fact, do all these things, even ifwe do not yet understand thedevelopmental aspect in any very coherentway. All small children display designability and use it in their own activitieseven when it is neglected in formaleducation. This is hardly surprisingbecause some knowledge of design,however acquired, is needed for survival.

We all, for example:

- try to create an environment whichreflects our aspirations;

- use tools and materials purposefully incooking, do-it-yourself, dressmaking andso on;

- make judgements about which objectsand places we like or dislike, evenattempting to say why;

- find ourselves moved and excited by thefine things that other people have made;

- choose or make clothes which make usfeel at ease, which we believe are ‘likeourselves’;

- respond to the visual messages ofadvertising, products, signs, buildings,films, television;

- create visual images by photography andmake qualitative judgements about whichones are ‘successful’ or which ones are‘unsuccessful’.

And, of course, we depend on the servicesof a society which uses all these sorts ofability in a deliberate way. When we carrythem out we are, just as with language,creating meaning. We are making up life aswe go along. We make up life throughbuildings, places, products and images justas much as we do through books, scientificenquiry, mathematical symbols, dramaticpresentations or sport.

Cognition and cognitive modellingWe have just suggested that design isessentially to do with the ability toconceptualise and evaluate plans for thefuture. This can be done externally throughsuch familiar mediums as words,drawings, plans, maps, models, prototypesand the like. Professor Archer’s importantcontribution over the last few years hasbeen to show that these externalmanifestations depend on an internalability to model known as ‘cognitivemodelling’. The idea is so central that it isworth spelling out more exactly what ismeant by this term.

The term ‘cognition’ is intended toembrace all those processes of perception,attention, interpretation, patternrecognition, analysis, memory,understanding and inventiveness that go tomake up human consciousness andintelligence. Philosophers of mind andcognitive psychologists tend now to talk ofcognition as the mental function ofconstruing sense experience asconceptions, and of relating conceptionswith one another. The use of the word‘construe’ is significant. It is intended toacknowledge the circumstance that theindividual conscious being cannot ‘know’anything of the reality beyond its own skinexcept by the collection and interpretationof the signals received by its sense organs.These signals are overlaid by all sorts ofirrelevance, interference and noise, anddistorted on reception by all sorts of errors,illusory juxtapositions and omissions.

Moreover, in the neurological sense, thesignals are ultimately received aselectrochemical impulses scattered overdifferent parts of the grey matter of thebrain. There is no screen anywhere in themind on to which a collected picture isprojected. The conception in the mindwhich is built from these scatteredimpulses is that of a coherent set of signalsbetraying the presence of a supposedlyequally coherent causal phenomenonbeyond the sense organs. Subsequentpatterns of signals may reinforce or denythe conception, or permit the usefulassociation of conceptions into greaterconceptions. When they are sufficientlyintegrated these constructions in the mind



become a general cognitive model ofexternal reality. Since the cognitive modelis all the individual consciousness has asevidence of external reality, then for allpractical purposes the cognitive model isseen as if it were the reality. Memory andimagination are those further capacities ofmind which are capable of conjuring upmodels of reality in the absence ofcausative sense data.

There is evidence that the human mind ispredisposed to construe sense experiencein particular ways, so that conceptions ofspace, form, object-coherence, colourtemperature, sound and so on, arecommon to all human beings. These couldbe called categories of perception. There isalso evidence that the human mind ispredisposed to seek similarities within andbetween its accumulating conceptions, andto assign these to categories. It is from thelabelling of conceptions and categories,and from the labelling of the relationsbetween conceptions and categories thatrational thought springs. It is from therecognition of pattern in and amongstconceptions and in and amongstcategories, and from the recognition ofpattern amongst the kinds of relationswhich conceptions and relations have withone another, that ‘designerly’ thoughtsprings. There is a third predisposition ofthe human mind which lifts it above andbeyond that of other sentient beings. Thisis the predisposition to assign symbols torepresent conceptions, categories andrelations. The use of symbols permitsabstraction in inner thought, and theexternalisation of thought for recording orcommunication purposes.

In the course of evolution the left half ofthe human brain has learned to specialisein the arts of categorisation from which isdeveloped rational sequential thought, andin the use of digital symbol systems toconstruct language, mathematics andforms of notation. At the same time theright half of the human brain has learnedto specialise in pattern recognition, and theuse of presentational symbol systems toconstruct images, diagrams and otherspatial forms of representation. Interplaybetween the two halves of the brainpermits the pursuit of thought both to the

highest levels of abstraction and to thefurther reaches of practical planning anddesign. (1)

To return to the issues which gave rise tothis paper, the terminology used by Archercan be clarified as follows:

The expression ‘cognitive modelling’ isintended to refer to the basic process bywhich the human mind construes senseexperience to build a coherent conceptionof external reality and constructs furtherconceptions of memory and imagination.The expression ‘imaging’ is intended torefer to that part of cognitive modellingwhich construes sense data and constructsrepresentations spatially andpresentationally, rather than discursivelyand sequentially.

This picture of the human being has manyimplications for design education. One ofthe most dramatic is that it must be anerror to identify design as in any specialsense ‘visual’. To match the cognitivemodel, it needs to be holistic in its content.To enlarge on this holism it is possible tosuggest a range of questions that atwelve–year-old might ask, and for whichdesign activity might provide a focus fordiscussing, expanding, reflecting anddeveloping meaning. Here they are:

What is the world like?What am I like?How did the world come to be the way it is?How did I come to be the way I am?How can I look at and analyse the worldI live in and understand it?How can I express or represent what Ifeel and know about the world?What do I value?Why do I like what I like?Can I make the world more like what Ilike?Can the world be made better?Can I improve myself?How can I plan to improve the world ormyself or both?Do I need to work with other people toimprove the world?How can I work with them?How can I express or represent myplans?



How can I make my plans becomereality?What tools and materials can I use?How can I use them?Must I change my plans because of whatI know about tools and materials?Is what I have made a success?What do I mean by success?How do I find out if it is a success?Which is more important, theirjudgement or mine?What have I learnt from trying to changethe world?Have I changed?What do I value?How do I want to live?What is the world like?What am I like?

Clearly, the majority of these questionscannot be said to be only the concern ofdesign. Many are shared with philosophyor ethics, others with art or craft ortechnology. But a number can only bedealt with by design. And the linkage fromintrospection, from an understanding ofthe world as it is, to the decision to act andto grasp that we are changed by acting, isat the core of what design has to offer asan educational experience at any level.

The significance of tool making

and usingA number of recent statements, includingsome originating from the DesignEducation Unit, have attempted to identifytool making and tool using as thefundamental origins of design and,therefore, at the basis of any designeducational experience. It is a view thathas caused uneasiness and, in a recentpaper for the Unit, Phil Roberts attemptedto say in just what ways it represents aninadequate position. Since he linked hiscritique with a reassertion that ‘takingaction’ is the fundamental element, it isworth following it in some detail. Here is aseries of extracts.

The criticism directed by some in-fieldpractitioners towards the assertedfundamentalness of tool-making and tool-using, and their criticism of the degree ofsignificance that is attributed to tool-making and tool-using presumably imply

the belief that there can be articulated amore fundamental and moreencompassing model or rationale.

Or, perhaps the criticism implies that theattribution of paramount significance totool-making and tool-using is to havedisplayed a subsidiary model. It saysperhaps, that a particular, but nevertheless‘strong’, interpretation of the capacity fortool-making and tool-using is actually orpotentially partial; and therefore misleading.It is saying, perhaps, that a model that isconstituted in the tool-making and tool-using capacity is lacking in explanatorypower: it is not sufficiently persuasive.

Differently put, and perhaps moreaccurately, it is not tool-using and tool-making that is inadequate: it is rather, theinadequacies inherent in the conceptionsof some practitioners that is weak, andwhich is demonstrated in some familiarcurriculum activities. This is a hard-hittingview; but its basic proposition may beexpressed easily enough.

The proposition is that the capacity fortool-making and tool-using – as commonlyunderstood, and this is an importantqualification – does not provide theconstituent basis for a powerful model.However, the term ‘tool-making and tool-using’ is descriptive of a dimension of, or astrand in, a quite differentconceptualisation. On this view, the statusof tool-making and tool-using is translatedfrom constituting a model to being adimension of a larger conceptualisation. (2)

But what is this larger conceptualisation?Phil Roberts continued:

It is natural for the human animal to wishto ‘make his mark in and on the world’ orto wish to be recognised as ‘a person’. Thehuman animal is so predisposed. Thispredisposition may be expressedalternatively or additionally in saying thatman exhibits a ‘will to meaning’: hewishes, necessarily, to understand himself,others, his habitat, and his place in it. Thewill to meaning is an aspect of the need ofhuman beings to understand theircondition and habitat – inner and externalreality.



In the pursuit of that greaterunderstanding, and through differing kindsof knowing and forms of knowledge,human beings act, individually andcollectively, in and on the world. Humanbeings possess a fundamental capacity: thecapacity for, and disposition towards,taking action in and on the world. Thecapacity to act is exhibited in differingmanifestations that employ differentmodels in relation to distinguishable kindsof phenomena and differing functions.

The capacity may be displayed in complexcollective acts which employ hightechnologies, and which may be bothcelebratory and highly functional-operational. This is to suggest thatwhatever the manifestation, and whateverthe mode and medium, the fundamentalcapacity to which any particularmanifestations are in reference is thecapacity for action and its associateddisposition to take action in and on theworld.

On this view, the fundamentalconceptualisation is of man as the agent ofaction, whether this action is to beconstrued in a context of high technologiesor existentially as the necessity to create orfind meaning and greater understandingand in-controlness.

At a later point the paper stated thefollowing:

Parenthetically, it might be worthwhile toattempt to relate this, which is potentially are-conceptualisation of curriculum, to thatfamiliar phrase ‘Doing and making’. Inpractice, the phrase almost always carries,as understood, a ‘necessary’ conjunctionwith artefacts: ‘making (some artefact)’. Buton the view expressed above, the termrequires extension. The term is toonarrowly and too partially operational, andlacking in the human dimension. It may beextended thus. ‘Doing, making and being =acting in and on the world’, or, man theagent of intentional action.

Hence the status of artefacts, in aneducational context, is opened up topossible re-appraisal. A model of artefactachieving is obviously legitimate when

artefact achieving is the principal objective.But once it is conceded that a model ofartefact achieving is not synonymous witha model of educational intent and practice,then the possible re-appraisal of the statusof artefacts raises questions to do with thenature of the relations between (1) thedevelopment of the agent of action; (2) thedevelopment of mind; and (3) theachieving of artefacts.

To summarise:Let it be accepted that man-the-agent-of-action provides the fundamentalconceptualisation on which educationalrationales, practices, and specific modelsof action might be more appropriatelypremised.

Let real-world ill-defined problemsrepresent the phenomena with which manthe agent of action necessarily treats.

Let it be accepted that the nature of humanbeing in the world (or being a person) isnecessarily at the core of any putative‘explanation’ of human action.

Then the development of that capacity,employed and engaged-in when treatingwith ill-defined problems becomes centralto would-be educative practice. Thecapacity to act with intention is realisedand manifested in the functioning of‘cognitive modelling’. In treating with real-world ill-defined problem, cognitivemodelling engages, employs, and isconstituted in, differing modes ofconceptualising, symbolising to the subjectphenomena, the ‘task situation’, and therequired functions/purposes. Theoperations encompassed by the term‘cognitive modelling’ are necessarily andinevitably complex, inter-active andtransformational. Different curriculumsubjects, or curriculum areas, are intendedto provide opportunities which will havethe effect of developing the capacity to act,both in a general sense and in terms ofspecific kinds of action and in relation toparticular kinds of phenomena.

The concept of literacyWhen we turn to see the design capacity ina social and cultural framework, then theconcept of literacy becomes important.



This, however, is a somewhat misusedterm, and it is necessary to say first whatwe intend by it.

The word literacy is much in vogue.Curriculum documents refer to suchconcepts as ‘visual literacy’ or‘technological literacy’. It is not alwaysclear what people mean by this.Sometimes it seems that all they mean isthat children and adults should spendmore of the school or college day onwhatever subject they are advocating. Thisis beside the point. Literacy has little to dowith the acquisition of knowledge or skillsin a narrow sense: rather it is about thegrowth of attitudes and confidence thatwill lead to participation: to, once again,the ability to ‘take action’ and be ‘incontrol’.

In a brilliant article ‘Classic Culture andPost-culture’, George Steiner has madevery clear the difference between beingable to read and write and being literate ina larger sense. In the following extract heis discussing the background against whichauthors wrote in what he describes as the‘classical age of the book’ between 1730and 1885.

The consensus of echo on which theauthority and effectiveness of booksdepended went deeper than schooling. Acorpus of agreed reference is in fact ofphilosophic, social value. The economy ofstatement that makes possible a literarystyle, and the recognisable challenges tothat style by the individual writer, hasunderlying it a large sum of undeclared butpreviously agreed-to social andpsychological assumptions. This isespecially so of the high literacy betweenthe times of Montesquieu and of Mallarmé.The kind of lettered public they had in viewis directly expressible of an agreed socialfabric. Both the linguistic means and therange of matter of books – in short thesemantic whole of authorship and reading- embodied and helped perpetuate thehierarchic power relations of westernsociety. (3)

Steiner’s concept of the ‘semantic whole’as a bond between writers and readers andtheir sharing of a common frame of

reference is something which we can alsorecognise in, for example, architecturaldesign in the eighteenth century. But itwould be wrong to assume, as Steinerseems to assume, that such ‘semanticwholes’ only have validity in the setting ofaristocratic culture. We can see exactly thesame gripping involvement in the creationof jazz in New Orleans or the jokes andsongs which children tell themselves in theschool playground.

In art and design the situation isparticularly teasing. There is no ‘semanticwhole’ between painters and sculptors andthe mass of the public, and there ispositive war between architects andplanners and the people who live in theflats, houses and towns that they havecreated. Yet these experts are theaccredited, professional guardians ofdesign awareness. In these circumstanceswhat can a concept like literacy mean, andhow could it be brought about?

The simple answer must be that we do notknow what literacy in design might meanbecause we have not yet experienced it in amass industrial society. What we can say isthat they are not ‘semantic wholes’ that canbe created by a change that affects only oneside of the equation. Steiner provides uswith the clue: literacy is something thatinvolved writer and reader in an activepartnership. It is not a situation where thewriter remains untouched by the encounter.It is a situation where writer and readerinteract with one another and, as a result,build up ‘a set of philosophic, social values’.

Could such a thing happen as a result ofdesign educational activity? It is notimpossible. Already the practice andexperience of design work in schools hasbeen separated from blindly copyingprofessional designers. Teachers havebeen able to provide a wider framework ofvalues than designers are normally able toconsider in their day-to-day activities.Some of this thinking could seep intoprofessional practice and those who haveexperienced it will be at home with it. In asimilar way, the Art and the BuiltEnvironment Project has provided a placewhere architects and planners have beenable to join with teachers and children in a



deliberate attempt to educate one another.Within the tiny compass of the ‘semanticwhole’ provided by a course or conferenceit has been remarkable to watch thedevelopment of shared languages and theability to think new thoughts.

How relevant is design education?We have tried to show that the designcapacity is fundamental to human beings,that through cognitive modelling it isinvolved in the great enterprise of ‘takingaction’, of being ‘in control’. We havesuggested that socially and culturally thegoal must be to increase participation andto create a ‘semantic whole’ between theequivalent of writers and readers –designers and users. We believe that theseconcepts and arguments hold together andthat they provide the beginnings of aframework within which designeducational activity can be planned,implemented, discussed and developed.

There remains, however, anotherdimension to the discussion. And that is tomake it clear that, in an historicalperspective, design is not just a desirableeducational priority – it is a critical one. Weare at a point where the deliberatedevelopment of the design ability mayactually be important for survival.

It can be convincingly argued that ‘designeducation’ is simply the most recent formof one of the oldest concerns of education.It is a particular response to the conditionsin which we now live, but this does notmean that education in the past ignoreddesign. Education has always concerneditself with material culture as well as withliterary and scientific culture. If specificlabels are ignored, it is easy to see thatwhat is today known as design educationcan trace its ancestry back to mankind’svery first attempts to create shelter, tools,images and utensils.

There are, however, important qualitativedifferences between societies dependenton craft-based means of production andthose where industrialisation is complete.These differences highlight the significanceof design and clarify its role as a mediatorbetween technology and culture. It is worthattempting to trace out these differencesrather precisely.

We have now lived through nearly twohundred years of industrialisation. Itseffects are widespread in spiritual as wellas material things. With this as a social andhistorical context, it is possible to list someof the reasons why it is important to studydesign in primary and secondary schools,business colleges, universities and the like,as well as in design schools:

1. Design, in the broadest sense, is thebundle of techniques, skills andapproaches that can be used todetermine the future character of theman-made world of buildings, places,images and products. Industrialisationhas vastly increased the effect of thisactivity on the quality of life. It nowaffects everyone.

2. Democracy demands that everybody hasan effective say in the decisions whichdetermine the future pattern of sociallife. But such an idea can only beeffective if education can bring alive theissues involved and develop ways inwhich non-specialists can study them.

3. Technology has vastly enlarged thescope and scale of man’s impact on thenatural environment. The decisionstaken can have a direct effect on thefuture survival of the planet. The issuesare far from simple or clear cut. Designactivity is one medium which canprovide practice in dealing with thetypes of open-ended problem that areinvolved.



4. Technology has ushered in a period ofcontinuing change. Handling change in apurposeful way is one of the maincharacteristics of design activity. It isimportant for individual and socialsurvival to be able to control change andto foresee its qualitative results.

5. Mass production has divided theconsumer from the maker. Theconsumer needs a broad range of skillsand understanding before he or she canreally take control of his or her ownenvironment. An experience of design,which inevitably involves takingqualitative decisions between variousalternatives, will help people return apersonally valid answer to the question:‘how do I want to live?’

6. Most people react without much thoughtto the powerful and technologicallybroadcast visual messages of the media.Yet these affect personal attitudes andinter-personal relationships as well asproviding entertainment. They are allproduced by design activity and a directunderstanding of what is involved willhelp to develop a more critical anddiscriminating attitude towards them.

Here then are the areas where literacy inour field would need to be effective. Hereis where it needs to achieve dramaticchanges in the balance of power betweendesigners and users, between provisionand participation. Literacy would indicate ageneral ability to understand and awillingness to take part in this crucial areaof human activity: the enterprise ofadapting our environment to our spiritualand material needs and, to that degree atleast, being ‘in control’ and creating ourown futures. We see that as the underlyingaim of all design educational activity.

References

1. Archer, Bruce, internal memo, DesignEducation Unit, Royal College of Art,1981

2. Roberts, Phil, ‘Notes towards thearticulation of the bases of the designdimension of curriculum’, DesignExaminations at 16+: Discussion andProposals, Design Education Unit, RoyalCollege of Art

3. Steiner, George, ‘Classic culture andpost-culture’, Times LiterarySupplement, October 1971



The papers reproduced in this publicationwere, of course, the product of a particulartime and particular circumstances. Manywere first presented at Conferences ofpolicy makers or practitioners: others weredrafted in response to changes inGovernment policy, or, indeed, at therequest of Government institutions. Theywere related to, and attempted to beinstrumental in, the ferment of ideas aboutdesign, education and design educationthat was a notable feature of the 1970s andearly years of the 1980s. So they were to acertain extent expedient. They certainly setout to argue the case for a particular pointof view.

We believe that they continue to berelevant, not so much because theyprovide specific answers to questions ofphilosophy, practice and policy butbecause they provide a useful frameworkin which such questions can be addressed.In fact, we claim that if they were betterknown they would help to dissolve someof the more teasing questions ofdefinitions and understanding thatcontinue to bedevil teachers, practitionersand researchers.

There is no doubt that many of us engagedin the field believe that the RCA-basedwork can still offer fresh insights. At thetime, they helped us to reach a betterunderstanding of learning and teaching indesign, and, in our view, still have thepotential to do this. In particular, BruceArcher’s invigorating analysis broke newground and offered a conceptualframework that went beyond existingboundaries, preconceptions andprejudices. It seemed to offer, on thelargest cultural scale, a perspective thatmight help to reintegrate Science, theHumanities and Design and on a smallereducational scale, be able to resolve thedestructive subject divisions in the schoolcurriculum. In 2005 this seems as topicaland desirable as it did thirty years ago.

The acid test is whether or not this body ofwork still usefully addresses what wemight call the ‘perennial research agenda’in the field of design education. Thatagenda has not changed and is to do with:

- the nature of design capacity;- the development of design ability;- the phenomena involved when we are

‘designing’;- the relationship between these and the

continuing process of teaching, learningand individual development.

There may be those readers who believethat these questions have been partiallyanswered by the introduction of NationalCurriculum Design and Technology, or atleast that teachers, practitioners andresearchers are absolved from having toconsider them because they have becomea ‘given’. With the introduction of theNational Curriculum, it may seem the focushas moved away from the ‘perennial’questions to concentrate on therequirements of implementation. This is aserious misconception because theimperatives of implementation do notnecessarily coincide with the imperativesof fundamental or operational research. Itis all too easy, once the perennial researchquestions vanish from the agenda, towrongly define a flawed concept as animplementation problem.

It is worth spending a little more time onthis issue because it has had a verynegative effect on the development ofNational Curriculum Design andTechnology. The National Curriculumrevision of Design and Technologyintroduces, first, a view of the design field,of designing, and of technology whichwhatever its possible merits isphilosophically and therefore operationallypartial: and second, displays a view whichis ideologically based and therebyphilosophically problematic. Third,National Curriculum Design andTechnology brings into being a range ofissues which arise directly from therequirement of implementation.


Basic issues Revisited: Agenda for the Future

Basic issues Revisited: Agenda for the FutureKen Baynes

Phil Roberts

It is this third point which is the one withthe greatest potential for hinderingprogress in fundamental research andwhich has the effect of discouragingteachers from probing the nature of theirown discipline. It is easy to accept that theprocess of working towards policyobjectives may throw light onfundamental issues. But the essentialfocus of implementation is not on enquiryinto and examination of thefundamentally problematic phenomena: itis implementation; and implementation isa condition in which the perennialresearch agenda may remain untouched.This is not surprising: the receivers ofpolicy – the practitioners in the field – arerequired to implement policy objectives.Never mind that the policy may beg thephilosophical and operational questions:the object of implementation is a matchwith specified objectives, not questioningof the well-foundedness of policy.Moreover, even were the distinctionsbetween problems located in afundamental research agenda and thosewhich arise from the requiredimplementation of policy more frequentlydistinguished and less rarely conflated, itis not as simple even as that: policies arepredicated on ideology.

Public policy and ideology may have anobvious connection but are rarelyexplicitly distinguished. Even more rarelyis the ideology basis of much publicpolicy made clear. Research projectswhich may be established to support theimplementation of policy are also obligedto work (if they wish to continue) withinthe ideological framework. On this view,the introduction of National CurriculumDesign and Technology can perhaps mostusefully be understood as an episode inthe continuing evolution of Design ineducation and society. Theimplementation of an ideologically-loadedpolicy does not necessary diminish, orremove, or resolve any of the perennialand fundamental design research agenda.

What then do the papers reprinted herehave to offer in relation to the perennialresearch agenda and, by implication, inmoving forward from the philosophicalstagnation induced by identifying ‘design

education’ solely with NationalCurriculum Design and Technology?

- Design is fundamental to all humanbeings.

- The core activity in designing isintentional activity in and on the world.

- Designing and understanding design areas much concerned with making meaningas making things and, indeed recognisethat to intentionally make things is also tomake meaning.

This a very broad framework. If accepted, itis possible to see that Design coulddeserve a place alongside Science and theHumanities as a ‘third area’ but equallythat it could not be constrained within theboundaries or any single discipline (forexample, architecture) or any single schoolsubject (for example, Design andTechnology).

Recognising the ‘fundamentalness’ ofdesign can lead to a re-appraisal of thosecurriculum subjects that are related todesigning and design awareness and,similarly, to an invigorating re-appraisal ofthe sufficiency of ‘the three Rs’ as the basisfor general education. Such a re-appraisalwould be especially relevant in a worldwhere material culture and masscommunications are ever expanding andwhere, by contrast, poverty is widespreadand the environment is in crisis. It alsooffers the potential of dissolving the sterilecomparison between ‘vocational’ and‘academic’ areas of study.

However, none of this is likely to beachieved without engaging with the topicsin the perennial research agenda. It is herethat Bruce Archer’s taxonomy of theDesign field is particularly useful. Itprovides, in itself, a very challengingprogramme for the future. To take twoexamples:

DESIGN AXIOLOGY the study of goodnessor value in design phenomena with specialregard to the relation between technical,economic, moral and aesthetic values.



The study of ‘goodness or value’ in anyfield is clearly fundamental tounderstanding and practising it. Toconfront and interpret the relationsbetween technical, economic, moral andaesthetic values as they affect, say, urbanplanning in developing countries, goes tothe heart of one of the most difficultquestions facing contemporary society.Equally, Western consumerism is basedon a very particular model of designaxiology which sometimes valuesindividual demand and immediatesatisfaction more highly than long-termsocial and environmental good. The list ofexamples could be expanded veryconsiderably. Clearly design axiology is acritical area of understanding and clearlyit goes beyond any particular ideology ofdesign or economics. Yet the ‘goodness orvalue in design phenomena’ is not wellunderstood or well researched and itcertainly does not occupy a prominentplace in general education.

DESIGN LANGUAGE (modelling) the studyof the vocabulary, syntax and media forrecording, devising, assessing andexpressing design ideas in a given area.

As present ‘modelling’ in this senseremains a part-recognised topic forresearch and a very problematic area forteaching and learning. Yet new insights inneuroscience and computer modellingprovide very productive ways of linkingwhat goes on in the brain to the waydesigners think, design and communicate.

The study of modelling as the designmedium or ‘language’ links directly intodesign epistemology and design history. Inthis area it is becoming clear that the‘thoughts that can be thought’ and the‘thoughts that can be presented andshared’ are shaped and determined bothby the structure of the brain andhumankind’s evolutionary and culturalexperience. Mental processes and creativeaction in and on the world are notabstractions but the result of decisionstaken by people with real and immediatebiological and physical needs as well asspiritual and aesthetic desires.

Here again, the effect of Archer’s taxonomyis to place design and designing on alarger stage and to highlight the narrowconfines of most approaches to design ingeneral education.

In ‘the three Rs’ it is suggested thatpursuing the knowledge base mapped bythe taxonomy will require cooperation withother disciplines. This must be right and itis striking how little it has been done.

It is encouraging to see how the taxonomyimmediately both reveals and organisesthe field of design and design education. Itallows us to perceive the constituent areasof the field and to appreciate the differentcommunities that could make acontribution to better understanding andbetter practice. It allows distinctions to berecognised between the general and thespecific and particular. It helps us in theavoidance of such easy errors as arguingfrom a specific case as though it appliedequally to the whole field and it begins theprocess of identifying which kind ofanalysis (for example, quantitative orqualitative, historical or sociological) isactually appropriate.

There is a further area where thetaxonomy offers a useful framework.Although it does not directly grapple withthe status of the designed world, itsapproach to design awareness and designactivity provides new ways of analysingthe issue. There is a danger – one Archerrecognised – in seeing commentary andanalysis as being in some way superior tothe landscapes, buildings, products andmedia that have resulted from the act ofdesigning. These manifestations ofmaterial culture are, of course, a designphenomenon in their own right to beplaced alongside the mental, social andeconomic factors that helped to createthem. It is clear that these are not simply‘objects’ or ‘places’ but repositories ofinformation and meaning that are of theessence in the field of design. They help toshape and inspire what later designersdesign and in many cases are actually themost potent influences linking past,



present and future through the medium ofdesign practice. They might perhaps becalled ‘made meaning’. It will be entirelyappropriate for researchers andpractitioners to probe the design fieldthough the medium of design activity andfor this to be at the core of design ingeneral education. However, this area of‘learning through doing’ is one of theproblematic elements in the design fieldand should itself be the subject of vigorousphilosophical and academic enquiry.Archer’s taxonomy offers the necessarytools for the job.



This is an extract from a morecomprehensive bibliography compiled byPhil Roberts in 1991. It concentratesspecifically on material closely related tothe Design Education Unit at the RoyalCollege of Art or to research or officialreports that influenced thinking aboutdesign education.

L Bruce Archer, ‘A Closer Look at theRelations between the Broad Concept ofDesign in General Education and itsComponent Parts’ [A paper presented to Midlands ArtAdvisers, Leicester, 6 May 1975]

L Bruce Archer, ‘Bridges for building,bridges for crossing’ [A paper presented at the 1980 annualconference of the Association of ArtInstitutions, 9 October 1980]

L Bruce Archer, ‘Cognitive Modelling,Rational Thinking, Language, DesignerlyThinking and Imaging’, Royal College ofArt, Design Education Unit: internal paper1982.

L Bruce Archer, ‘Design education inschools’[A paper presented at the conference’Design Education and Industry’, organisedby the Regional Advisory Council forTechnological Education, London & HomeCounties, 10-14 July 1978]

L Bruce Archer, ‘The Mind’s Eye: not somuch seeing as thinking’, Designer,January1980, pp8-9

L Bruce Archer, ‘The Need for DesignEducation’[A paper presented to DES ConferenceH805, Horncastle, July 1973]

L Bruce Archer, ‘Time for a Revolution inArt and Design Education’, Royal Collegeof Art: Occasional Papers Number 6 1978

L Bruce Archer, Ken Baynes, RichardLangdon, Design in General Education [PhilRoberts (ed)] (The Report of an enquiry

conducted by the Royal College of Art forthe Secretary of State for Education andScience), London: Royal College of Art,Department of Design Research 1979

L Bruce Archer, Ken Baynes, RichardLangdon, Design in General Education(Part One: Summary of findings), London:Royal College of Art, Department of DesignResearch 1976

Bernard Aylward (ed), Design Education inSchools, London: Evans 1973 [Case accounts of work developing inLeicestershire LEA; mixed in quality;historically interesting; early fore-runner ofsome of the matters introduced underNational Curriculum Technology.]

Ken Baynes, About Design, London: TheDesign Council – Heinemann 1976

Ken Baynes (ed), Attitudes in DesignEducation, London: Lund Humphries 1969 [Includes a very good contribution byAnthony Horrocks.]

Ken Baynes, ‘A Case Study in ActionResearch’, Design Studies, Volume 3Number 4 October 1982, pp 213-219

Ken Baynes, ‘Designerly Play’, NADEJournal, Spring 1986, pp 25-34

Ken Baynes, ‘A Personal Retrospect: TheArgument for Design Education’, Studies inDesign Education and Craft, Volume 10Number 7 Winter 1977, pp8-11

Ken Baynes, ‘Defining a Design Dimensionof the Curriculum’ (in Thistlewood)

Ken Baynes, ‘Design and the Division ofLabour – is Design Radical?’ Seminarpaper, RCA Design Education Unit 1979

Ken Baynes and Allan Grant (eds), DesignEducation One: in Schools, HornseyCollege of Art 1966

Ken Baynes and Allan Grant (eds), DesignEducation Two: Scientific Techniques,Hornsey College of Art 1967


Select Bibliography

Select Bibliography

Ken Baynes and Phil Roberts, ‘DesignEducation: the basis issues’, RCA DesignEducation Unit (in Richard Langdon et al)

Nigel Cross, ‘Design Education forLaypeople’, Studies in Design Education,Craft and Technology, Volume 11 Number2 Spring 1979, pp 68-72

Nigel Cross (ed), Design and Participation,[Proceedings of the Design ResearchSociety’s Conference, Manchester,September 1971], London: AcademyEditions 1972

Nigel Cross, David Elliott, Robin Roy (eds),Man-Made Futures: Readings in Society,Technology, and Design, London:Hutchinson Educational – Open UniversityPress 1974

Design 328 April 1976 [for articles ondesign educational developments inschools], pp 40-47

Design Council, Design Education atSecondary Level, (The Keith-Lucas Report),London: The Design Council 1980

Design Council, Engineering DesignEducation, (The Moulton Report), London:The Design Council 1976

John Eggleston (ed), The Best of CraftDesign & Technology, Trentham Books1988 [The 20th Anniversary Volume ofStudies in Design Education Craft &Technology)

Peter Green, Design Education: ProblemSolving and Visual Experiences, London:Batsford 1974

Peter Green and J Prescott Thomas, ‘LookOut: Design and Environment’,(Programme notes for a schools televisionseries, for pupils aged 13-16, broadcast inAutumn 1972 and Spring 1973), London:BBC 1972

J Christopher Jones, Design Methods,London: Wiley-Interscience [Chapters 1-3 would be very helpfulreading]

Keith-Lucas Report: see Design CouncilRichard Landgon, Ken Baynes and PhilRoberts (eds), Design Education (Theproceedings of the Design Educationsection of an international conference ondesign policy held at the RCA, London, 20-23 July 1982), London: The Design Council1984

Patrick Nuttgens, ‘Learning to somepurpose’, (Burton Design Award 1977),London: SIAD [Includes a useful passage on the nature oftechnology, distinguishing it from appliedscience.]

Oxford, University of, Delegacy of Localexaminations: Advanced Level ‘Design &Technology (Design)’ (9883) [This GCE A level course is the successorto the innovative 9883 Design syllabuswhich was pioneered in the 1970s. Thereare other A level syllabuses andexaminations but this one reflectsparticularly closely the thinking of thosecurriculum innovators who wished todevelop a design-based course.]

Norman Potter, What is a designer: things,places, messages, London: Hyphen (3rdedn) 1989 [Brilliantly fresh; wonderfully allusivestyle.]

David Pye, The Nature of Design, London:Studio Vista 1964 (but see the later versionwhich combines this with The Nature ofArt of Workmanship) [Worth sticking with:excellent, for instance, on the nature offunction and on such easy slogans as ‘formfollows function’.]

Horst W J Rittell and Melvin M Webber,‘Wicket Problems’. in Cross et al [A much-published article, worth reading]

Phil Roberts, Design Examinations at 16+:Discussions and Proposals, London: RCADEU 1982

Phil Roberts, ‘Design is for Everyone’,Studies in Design Education Craft &Technology, Volume 11 Number 2 Spring1979, pp 73-75


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Phil Roberts, ‘Beyond Ideology: Retrospectand Prospect’, Studies in Design EducationCraft & Technology, Volume 14 Number 2Spring 1982, pp 84-89

Phil Roberts, ‘Learning to Mean’, DesignStudies, Volume 3 No 4 October 1982, pp205-211

Phil Roberts and Bruce Archer, ‘Design andTechnology Awareness in Education’,Studies in Design Education Craft &Technology, Volume 12 Number 1 Winter1979, pp 55-56

David Thistlewood (ed), Issues in Designand Education, London: Longman 1990 [A collection of essays which balancesthose in Eggleston (1988), and moretoughly refereed.]


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a framework for design and design education: a reader containing papers from the 1970s and 80s

Documents

design of research

design technology

design council

design philosophy

design works

design cognition

design development

aspect of design