Design Education

Design Education and the Multicultural Matrix
A descriptive study with a guiding question about practices of

post-secondary design educators who address the multicultural
character of their student bodies in their design classrooms
and prepare those students for the multicultural and global
nature of contemporary design practices.
Elizabeth C. Hungerland
Master of Arts in Education Candidate
Antioch University-Seattle
March 2000
Elizabeth C. Hungerland, 2000
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The challenge is to create learning experiences that
allow the integrity of every learner to be sustained while
each person attains relevant educational success and
mobility
--Wlodkowski and Ginsberg (1995, p. 18).
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
3 TABLE OF CONTENTS
7 CONFIRMATION
8 ABSTRACT
9 CHAPTER I: A RATIONALE
9 An Overview of Design
11 An Introduction to the History of Design Education
12 Implications of contemporary design practices and design
education
14 The relationship between professional design practice and
design education
18 Institutions and students in design education
19 Problem Statement
21 Significance of the Study
22 Definition of Terms
33 CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW
34 What Is Design?
36 Figure 1: The difference between art and design
39 A Brief History of Design
44 The Link Between Professional Education, Design Education, and
Design Practices
45 An Overview of Professional Education and Its History
47 Contemporary Issues in Professional Education
55 Design Education as a Type of Professional Education
56 The History of Design Education
57 Theoretical Framework of Design Education
60 Contemporary Issues and Challenges in Design Education
60 The theory/content debate, revisiting the Greeks
64 Multicultural issues and the impact of technology
67 Multicultural competence in higher education and in
design education
92 Conclusion
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95 CHAPTER III: A METHODOLOGY
96 Theoretical Framework
98 Research Design
99 Identifying and Soliciting Participants
100 Purposeful Sample
102 Data Collection
102 Interviews
103 Artifacts
104 Triangulation
104 Data Analysis
107 Interrators Analysis
108 Validity of Analysis
108 Assumptions and Expectations
110 Limitations
110 Conclusion
112 CHAPTER IV. FINDINGS
112 Schema
114 Instructor Sets the Sociocultural Agenda
114 Sociocultural issues are embedded in the course content
115 Teachers prepare student to solve constantly changing
contemporary issues
116 Multicultural students identified
117 No mention of responding to individual student needs
118 Teacher as risk-taker: willing to introduce controversial
social, environmental, and cultural issues
118 Instructor Is Situationally Responsive To Students Needs
119 Individual student needs frame teacher responses:
situational sensitivity
120 Maximizing student potential
120 No specific sociocultural agenda identified by
teacher
120 Educators express respect for students
121 Design process is developed as a framework for problem
solving and critical thinking
122 The role of new media is limited to research
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125 The paradox of situationally sensitive instructors
125 Responsive adjustments are retained and refined
whether or not the stimulus has been removed
126 Instructor Is Both Responsive to Individual Student Needs and
Sets an Agenda
126 Heightened awareness of others cultural or positionality
issues is stressed
126 Designing for others issues, environmentally, socially, and
culturally
127 Design process is developed as a framework for problem
solving and critical thinking
127 Maximizing student potential
128 Responsive adjustments retained and refined whether or
not the stimulus has been removed
129 Conclusion
131 CHAPTER V. DISCUSSION
131 The Relationship of Initial Intent to the Results
132 The Differences in the Approaches to Multiculturalism
133 Each Approach Has Its Limitations and Benefits
134 Resources from the Literature
137 The Relationship of the Data to the Literature
137 Process vs. content in the structure of curriculum
138 Who is a multiculturally responsive teacher?
143 The risk of challenging the status quo
144 Interpretations of Results
146 Figure 2: Changes in dynamics of design and design education in
the United States
149 Implications for Application to Multicultural Design Pedagogy
157 Areas for Future Study
161 Conclusion
166 REFERENCES
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184 APPENDICES
184 Appendix I: Questionnaire
185 Appendix II-A: Sample inquiry letter
186 Appendix II-B: Sample inquiry email
187 Appendix III: Multicultural Strategies
188 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
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CONFIRMATION
The undersigned hereby confirm that this research report fulfills the requirements
for the research portion of and part of the degree requirements of Master of Arts in
Education at Antioch University, Seattle.
Jim Borgford-Parnell, MA Date
Associate Faculty, Graduate Programs in Education
Advisor and Research Faculty, Antioch University
Lee Karlovic, Ph. D. Date
Lecturer, Woodring College of Education
Western Washington University
Jan Rogan Date
Assistant Dean, School of Design
The Art Institute of Seattle
Elizabeth C. Hungerland Date
Instructor, The Art Institute of Seattle
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Graduate Student, Master of Arts in Education, Antioch University
ABSTRACT
The pressures of multiculturalism affect design education from at least two
directions. One, from within the post-secondary design classroom, encompasses (a)
maximizing the potential of all design students, including those of marginalized
populations, and (b) the potential of heightening the sensitivity of all students to each
others multicultural issues. Secondly, the character of contemporary design practices, for
which design students are being prepared, demands that those who enter these practices
be multiculturally competent due to the global nature of those practices.
This study asked the question, what are the strategies of experienced post-
secondary design educators who address the multicultural character of their student
bodies in their design classrooms, and as well as their strategies for preparing students for
the multicultural and global nature of contemporary design practices? Six design educators
participated in this qualitative study. The data collected coalesced around three categories.
In the first category, the instructor set the sociocultural agenda and embedded it in the
course content. In the second, the instructor was situationally responsive to perceived
student needs. In the third category, the instructor both set the sociocultural agenda,
embedding it in the course content, and was situationally responsive to student needs.
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Discussion of each category, its benefits and limitations, and ramifications for future
study, is followed by suggestions for implementation of multicultural strategies in post-
secondary design classrooms.
CHAPTER I: A RATIONALE
Todays vibrant worldwide economies mean that new constituencies are
accumulating wealth and demanding goods and services, including education. New types
of businesses are developing in dynamic ways, and new niches in the global economy are
invented daily. Bilateral instant access to world-wide markets for goods and services via
the World Wide Web and multilateral communication via chat rooms and interest groups
on the Web impact each designer and demand more from the design community at large,
and thus more from design education. Cyberspace and new technologies change the
educational needs of design students and challenge the knowledge base of the design
educator. Designers have embraced the digital revolution as a tool and as a marketing
vehicle, and designers from marginalized populations find themselves in demand as the
previously ignored micromarkets are targeted. The students in design classrooms in the
United States represent a more pluralistic mix of contemporary domestic and international
cultures. How does design education and how do design educators respond to these twin
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pressures the multicultural needs of the global marketplace and the multicultural needs
of domestic and international students in design classrooms?
An Overview of Design
Design has a pervasive influence on the lives of ordinary citizens. When you brush
your teeth in the morning, some designer has decided what your toothbrush will look like
and what it will feel like in your hand and in your mouth. A designer has chosen the cut
of your clothes, the color of your towels, the shape of your toaster, the frame of your
door, the comfort of the seat in your car, the form of your phone, the cover of your CD,
the look of your newspaper, the images and type in the advertising you watch on
television, and the format and appearance of the website you visit. An investigation of
the roots of design and of design education, as they have evolved and are continuing to
evolve, is important to citizens of a contemporary society because of that very
pervasiveness. Design education is the training ground for those who formulate the
products and services of society today, and is thus a subject worthy of inquiry.
Many have attempted to define design itself. Cullen (1998, p. 31) suggests that
there is no one elemental reply to the question: What is design? Others are less hesitant
to weigh in on the question. Hastings (1998) suggests that design is the universal
language of mankind in that its visual and physical nature make it an internationally
comprehensible means of communication (p. 2). Findeli writes design is considered to
be an idea, a knowledge, a project, a process, a product, or even a way-of-being (p. 4).
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Swanson (1994) posits that design is an integrative field that bridges many subjects that
deal with communication, expression, interaction, and cognition (p. 73), including
engineering, marketing, education, psychology, anthropology, literature, and political
science. Its parameters are changing as communication changes, as markets globalize and
at the same time become segmented (Ilyin, 1997). As a professional practice, design has
many subsets including architecture, interior design, industrial design, landscape design,
graphic design, interactive design, and website design, among others (McCoy, 1998), and
it is an education both liberal and practical (Swanson, 1997, Davis 1998).
Designs methodology is called design process, that, unlike mathematics or
science, considers many possible alternative solutions for each problem posed (Berryman,
1990, Ocvirk et al., 1994, Bevlin, 1993, Lauer and Pentak, 1995, Wong and Wong, 1994 ).
Design shares its tools with fine craft and fine art, but where art and craft are personal
aesthetic expressions, design always has communication of an idea or a function with the
end user at its heart (Berryman, 1990).
An Introduction to the History of Design Education
Design began as a trade activityconnected to industrialization and the
emergence of mass communication (Buchannan, 1998, p. 64). Crafters had once
produced products one by one or in small multiples. With the advent of the age of
industrialization, the crafter no longer hand-made an object. Objects were mass-produced
for mass-markets, and visual communications and advertising were devised to sell the
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products to these mass-markets. While some of the connection to craft remains today in
design/build practices, the designing or the ideation phase of product, of built
environments, of digital and print uses, is separated from the actual construction and
production.
Primarily to serve the needs of industrialization, the Bauhaus School, founded in
Germany in 1919 by Walter Gropius, represents an important and significant endeavor
toward devising both a general definition of design and a method of design education in the
twentieth century (Findeli, 1990, p. 4). Gropius used two basic concepts to underpin
the Bauhaus philosophy: art + technology. Its premise was anti-bourgeois, anti-historical
(anti-Beaux Arts), and is best captured in the phrase form follows function in a way
that honored the materials used for the beauty found in the material itself (McCoy, 1998).
McCoy (1998) suggests that the Bauhaus was the first school to organize and codify
ideas about design into an educational method, based on objectivity and rationalism, and
was the first in design education to declare that basic design principles underlie all design
disciplines (p. 5).
Eventually, the profession of design emerged, and splintered into graphic design
(design of the printed word, print media, and advertising), architectural design (the design
of built structure), landscape design (the design of exterior spaces), interior design (the
design of interior spaces), and industrial design (the design of product, including vehicular
design).
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Design as a practice, profession, and education followed the blueprint and honored
the traditions of the Bauhaus School. During the digital revolution of the last decade, the
basic design principles that create the foundation of design, called the principles and
elements of design, codified and framed in the Bauhaus, have been applied to new media
design, including interactive design and website design, further expanding the world of
design to new, instantly accessible audiences (Rosado, 1994). Thus, new technology still
informs art and science in the practice of design, as was once postulated by Moholy-
Nagy.
Implications of contemporary design practices and design education
While in the nineteen fifties in America and Europe, design and design education
catered to mass markets as determined by those trained in the Bauhaus traditions and in
the traditions of the dominant culture of the era, the emphasis today in design is on the
individual reader/viewer/user of design products in a post-structuralist world. The
designer must be aware of the possibility of multiple interpretations of his/her design
(McCoy, 1998, p. 1). The demands and implications of worldwide access underscore the
need for multicultural savvy in the contemporary designer and the contemporary design
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educator. McCoy (1998) writes:
applications of these theories offer the opportunity for other, more subjective
and personal layers of meaning, in addition to the purely objective and
informational. These strategies encourage new wavedesigners to work with
layers of meaning and content, as well as layers of form. In addition, this new
focus on audience interpretation challenges designers to tailor their visual messages
to the special characteristics of each projects target audience. The deconstruction
of meaning holds important lessons about our audiencesbut poses some
problems as well. While these theories applaud the existence of unstable meaning
because of audiences varying cultural contexts and personal experiences, this can
be at odds with the clients need for a single, clear interpretation of the message.
(p. 10)
The contradiction of a single, clear message of a mass-market era versus multiple
layers of individual meaning in contemporary society is just being addressed in design
practices and in design education. What is included in a single, clear message excludes a
great deal and assumes a great deal; what is said in a sound bite leaves much unsaid;
indeed, is there actually such a thing as a single, clear interpretation of the message that
McCoy postulates the client longs for?
Sociologists suggest that the challenges of designing for the digital domain and
marketing design through the digital domain have revealed a need for a more broadly
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educated designer who not only understands cultural relevance but has cultural curiosity
and tolerance (Rosado, 1994). There are few mass-markets left to which design can
respond. If McCoy is correct, if mass-markets are evolving into smaller targeted markets,
then how can goods and services be sold and to whom? Blauvelt and Davis (1995) write:
Largely because of the cultural consciousness engendered by the successive social
movements of the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., civil rights, feminism, gay and lesbian
rights, nationalism, and so on), the constitution of bothdesigners and audiences has
changed. We have witnessed an influx of women into the field; this along with an
increasing ethnic diversity has produced challenges to many of the premises of a
white, male, European approach to design education and practice. Simultaneously,
there have arisen an increasingly tailored approach to message construction and a
narrowing of audience definition along cultural lines, challenging the simplistic models
and outdated theories of communication based on reaching homogenous masses or
average consumers. (p. 78)
We need moredesign particular to the tribes, suggests Lorraine Wild in Poynors
article Building bridges between theory and practice, design that talks to diverse groups
in specifically made visual languages each group will understand (1994, p. 67). How do
design educators, who themselves were educated in a prior era, address these
modifications in design itself, and tailor their content and methodology to the challenges
of this brave, new, multicultural world?
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The relationship between professional practice and design education
Just as there is a tension between perceived client needs and the actualities of
communication and the marketplace today, so is there a tension between design education
and the professional practice of design. Students in post-secondary design programs are
educated to take up positions in design practices upon graduation; thus, there is a clear
link between design practice and design education. Those in design practice (many times
the educators themselves), responding to the demands of the marketplace, have directed
educators to structure content and methodology in the classroom to produce students
who could respond to those very marketplace demands. This partnership served the
design industry very well until the last decade when widely available computer programs
swallowed part of the fundamental tasks of the design profession. In fact, at the technical
level in most design disciplines, the computer has streamlined production, opened new
niches in the marketplace, and demanded competence from students and educators alike to
keep up with rapid digitization of industry.
The marketplace that design and design education serve is changing at such a rapid
rate that corresponding design educational content and methodology are having difficulty
keeping pace. Indeed, it is partly this rapid gait that has design education asking itself if it
should keep pace at all or march off on a different path altogether, one more suitable to
academia. The Aristotelian educational model of a liberal education for freemen cast
aspersions on the trades (which were practiced by slaves), and thus, the close alliance of
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trades to design education (formerly the applied arts or commercial arts) has separated it
from other aesthetic inquiries (Swanson, 1997). There is considerable controversy about
whether design education should be a liberal art (Margolin, 1994, Swanson, Whiteley,
Findeli, Stafford, 1995) or remain as a studio-based discipline, closely allied with practice.
It is only recently that inquiries have been made into the nature and broader
application of design studies as a method of problem solving, and into the possibility of
design as a study in itself as is sociology, education, political science, among others.
(Blauvelt & Davis, 1997, Swanson, 1997). Blauvelt and Davis (1997) suggest that there
should be a critical, pedagogical strategy that emphasizes alternative approaches to
conventional problem-solving paradigms which include both problem-seeking initiatives
and problem-posing inquiries (p. 80). Others see design history and design studies as
disciplines in themselves and worthy of theoretical and educational scrutiny as well as
departmental formulation (Margolin, 1994).
Not only are there those who would see design studied as a liberal art in which one
could study design without the intent of becoming a design practitioner, but there are
those who see practical design education becoming an equal partner with practice, rather
than being reactive to practice. Buchanan (1998) posits that design has completed two
eras, the first of which was a trade activity, connected to the industrial age, and the
second, the era of professionalization. In the second era, design education was reactive to
the professional world. In the third era, Buchanan envisions that practice and education
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will be partners so that educators, while they may still teach the fundamental skills, are
also investigating the very nature of design itself and its potential. To this end Cullen
(1998) suggests:
Students, educators, and professionals need to actively engage a more holistic
sense of design as a strategic discipline, mindful of its meaning as both noun and
verb, as a physical act of making and a cognitive process for creating. (p. 35)
Some design educators, contrary to the very influential Paul Rand, who suggested
that a design student with anything but the visual and visceral reaction and solution to the
problem is a student whose mind is cluttered, feel that design students should be well
grounded in psychology, anthropology, sociology, and politics so that their designs are
informed and multilayered (Rand, 1993, p. 217). This is what Margolin (as suggested in
Swanson, 1994) calls modern design education. Stafford (1995), too, wishes to pursue the
crosscutting cultural studies and transcategorical investigations that design itself offers,
since design uses psychology, physiology, anthropology, cognition, mathematics and
science, among others (Stafford, 1995, p. 66). Stafford also makes the point that higher
education is experiencing not only a liberating intellectual inter-disciplinarity, but a
compressive fiscal interdisciplinarity as well (p. 66). If one broadly applies design and
design process, one has the means to problem-solve, whatever the problem and whenever
it is posed. However, if one learns to solve todays problems in particular, one is only
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equipped to solve todays problems, which may in no way resemble the problems of
tomorrow (Buchanan, 1998).
Walker (1998) suggests that academic design work should be exploration of
approach, of issues of contemporary culture as they relate to form, of the potential of
materials, technology, and expression. One can see the roots of Moholy-Nagy and the
New Bauhaus in this philosophy. This would seem to be the middle ground between the
design studies camp and a strictly-professional-education camp. Commercial design,
according to Walker (1998) is another discipline entirely, since its aim is to increase
profits for a company. Commercial design work has to be economically viable.
Academic design work has to be intellectually viable (p. 4).
The form into which design itself metamorphoses is the subject of a great deal of
debate within the design community, and the present and future response that design
education formulates is in question as well. Cullen (1998) writes, design may emerge as
the quintessential twenty-first century profession, a vital form-giving, wayfinding,
meaning-making synthesis of art, technology and social science (p. 33). Doesnt it
follow that design education should frame a response to this metamorphosis?
Institutions and students in design education
While it has been discussed in this chapter how the practice of design in general
has a pervasive impact in our contemporary lives, it has not been revealed how many
educational institutions offer design programs and are therefore influenced by the debates
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within design education. According to Davis (1998a), there are two thousand
undergraduate programs in graphic design around the country, one hundred ten in
architecture, and forty-seven in industrial design. Not mentioned are six- and eight-quarter
programs that trade schools offer in graphic design, industrial design, interior design,
computer animation, website design, among others. Trade schools are closely tied to
professional practice, and have not traditionally participated in the design studies vs.
design history, or the professional education vs. design studies debates, although such
curricular changes are beginning to appear in these educational institutions as well.
Who are the design students of today, and how do they differ from those in the
past? Students who enter design classrooms today do not only represent the dominant
culture in the United States and Europe, but are from marginalized populations and
international communities that can now, during times of economic prosperity, afford a
higher education. Their expectations and assumptions are different than those of students
just a decade ago. Stinespring, & Kennedy (1995) suggest:
Modernism has been branded by postmodern philosophy as racist, sexist, elitist,
classist, and environmentally destructive, homophobic, exclusively Eurocentric,
ageist, and ableist. Postmodern critics maintain that the art world has been
controlled by galleries, art schools, and museums that are managed, directed,
supported, and staffed by males of European ancestry who seem to share an
aesthetic standard that they presume is universal (p. 1).
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So, contemporary design classrooms are filled with students who are much more
pluralistic in nature than the design student of forty years ago. They are more diverse.
They are multicultural. And the marketplace that these students will serve is diverse,
pluralistic, and multicultural as well.
How do we as design educators see that our materials are responsive to the needs
of all our students, not only in terms of different modes of learning, but in terms of
cultural inclusivity of every sort? The world that our students face may be considerably
different than the one the educators faced as students or even the one the educators are
most comfortable with as practitioners. The marketplace demands a more multiculturally
responsive designer and design educator, and so do the student bodies in design
classrooms.
The task, then, of the design educator at the post-secondary level, may be to
explore methods and means to give voice and agency to all students in materials and
methodology, remaining authentic and responsive to their individual needs and their needs
as future professional designers, and yet constant to curricular demands that change at a
slower pace than does the marketplace.
Problem Statement
Changes in design education in the United States reflect the changing nature of
design students, design practices, and the marketplace here and abroad. No longer are the
students in American post-secondary design classrooms solely Eurocentric males being
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educated by Eurocentric males in a Eurocentric discipline to be practiced by Eurocentric
males for Eurocentric male clients. Design and design educators have been slow to make
changes in practice and in education to reflect the multicultural, diverse, pluralistic nature
of the marketplace and of the student bodies. Not only are there a considerable number of
international students inhabiting our classrooms, but also there are American domestic
students who reflect the multicultural and pluralistic society we inhabit in the United
States. Clients served by the professionally educated are global in nature and in intention,
and focused on micro-markets here and abroad as well. The nature of design practices has
been enormously impacted by the digital domain. The content of the study of design is
evolving, and becoming broader as well, incorporating other liberal studies and
considerations.
Blauvelt and Davis (1997) ask:
How will design education respond to the erosion of its technical service
foundation, fundamental shifts in the nature of information, and changing social
constitution of designers and audiences? (p. 78)A crucial element of critical
pedagogy is the recognition, not the dismissal of students social experiences and
cultural affiliations, which serve as lenses through which they experience the
world and are a reflection of the audiences we attempt to reach. This awareness
means the classroom represents the intersection of different voices, many of
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which are absent from most programs and educational philosophies as well as
from many successful design offices. (p. 80)
Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify the strategies of experienced post-
secondary design educators who address the multicultural character of their student
bodies in their design classrooms, and as well as their strategies for preparing students for
the multicultural and global nature of contemporary design practices.
Significance of the Study
As the study commenced, Id hoped to improve my own multicultural strategies
in post-secondary design education through this investigation of multicultural, pluralistic,
and diverse design practices. Indeed, during this study, my own practice has been
impacted in the material I present, the approach to choose the text, the support
documents I use, and the professional vocabulary I present in class. Through the use of
such materials, texts, and professional vocabulary, it has been my intent to honor the
agency and voice of each student, to expand my students awareness of the global nature
of their potential practices and to tolerance, understanding, and indeed, curiosity and
wonder about other peoples and cultures, both within the United States and elsewhere as
well. As I discuss my project in the institution where I teach, I have opened lines of
dialogue in the classroom and with my colleagues, attempting to explore many of the
multicultural issues that surround design education and practice today.
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My initial assumptions shaped the framework of the study, including that there
will be some benefit to the design community from this study. Other assumptions
included (a) that design educators view multiculturalism as integral to their teaching
practices, given the issues revealed in the literature review and in my own teaching
practice, (b) that instructors would embrace the opportunity to talk about the changing
design student body and the challenges that a global marketplace imposes on design
classrooms, (c) that as design practices reach global audiences, design educators would
respond to the needs of practice by employing multicultural strategies in their classrooms,
and (d) that design educators would have developed classroom strategies that were
inclusive of all design students in their classrooms, domestic and international.
The development of materials and methodology that support the exploration of
multicultural issues in design education is a long-term goal, building upon those strategies
revealed by the educators in the participating group. Further, the results of the study
should inform the practice of post-secondary design education in general in practical
methodology and in discussion of multiculturalism in design education and design
practice.
Definition of Terms
1. Design: depends on whether design is considered to be an idea, a [body of]
knowledge, a project, a process, a product, or even a way-of-being. [It is]
multidisciplinary in natureto be found somewhere at the intersection of technology,
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art, and science (Findeli, 1990, 4). It has a code (principles and elements of design) and
a process (design process). The principles of design the underlying fundamental concepts
are common to many of the arts and include (but are not necessarily exclusive to)
harmony, variety, rhythm, balance, movement/time, proportion, dominance/emphasis,
economy, and unity. The elements of design are the tools with which design is expressed
and include line, color, value, space, texture, form, and shape. Today, the discipline of
design has broadened its boundaries from the traditional set as described above to a more
holistic sense of design as a strategic discipline, mindful of its meaning as both noun
and verb, as a physical act of making and a cognitive process for creating (Cullen, 1998,
p. 35).
2. Design education is one of the three parts that make up the profession of design:
education, practice, and theory. Tied closely to professional practices in various fields of
design, design education is undergoing radical change, including the challenging issues of
the global marketplace, the electronic media, the generalist-specifist debate, and the
emergence of design and visual studies as a liberal art (McCoy, 1998).
3. Design Process is the codified method by which designers problem-solve. It has
four phases that include problem identification, development, selection, and
implementation. Some writing on design issues today suggest that design process has
larger applications outside design itself (Goldsby-Smith, 1996). Design process is neither
deductive nor inductive, but reductive of many possibilities and solutions until the best is
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revealed (Berryman, 1990). Design experiences require that students move fluently
among linguistic, visual, and computational modes of thought in the solution of problems
for which there are many right answers (Davis, 1998, p. 5). Some interesting work is
being done in this area by Robert Jerrard (1998), based on the work of Kelly (1955),
Bannister (1962), and Osgood (1957) in what Osgood calls differentiating the meaning of
a concept, or, as Jerrard puts it, judging a concept against a series of scales (p. 41).
4. Critique is an essential part of design process and involves an assessment of
the solution for further variables. It includes evaluation of both the positive and negative
aspects of the design and/or prototype, and is conducted by the designer and design team.
Allied to critical thinking, Wilde and Wilde (1991) explain:
Editing especially self editing is a critical skill that requires an inner sense or
understanding of what attracts ones own attentionwhile keeping in mind the
precise intent of the problem. Good editing skills reinforce good problem solving
skills, and vice versa. (p. 141)
5. Professional education is one that prepares students for professional practice
rather than for a non-profession-associated degree such as liberal studies or political
science. Examples are medicine, law, architecture, landscape architecture, interior design,
graphic design, and new media design, and social work, among others. There is a
vocational component to professional education (McCoy, 1998) as well as a symbiotic
alliance with professional practices and commercial activity.
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6. The word practice is used throughout this study to mean a professional level
endeavor for which one gets paid. Thus, it is used, as is commonly done, for the
professional practice of design, or design practices. It is also used in this study and
elsewhere (Merriam and Brockett, 1997) to refer to teaching practices and practitioners,
those endeavors of pedagogy that teachers, professors, and instructors engage in for
which they prepare educationally and for which they get paid.
7. Built-environment design includes architecture, landscape architecture, and interior
design as well as urban systems of transportation, water, sewage, and electricity. It could
include industrial design if the result were a built environment such as a trade show booth
(Simpson, 1999, p. 1).
8. Fields of design are mentioned in the body of the study and include architecture,
landscape architecture, industrial design (product and transportation), interior design,
graphic design, and new media design (Berryman, 1990).
9. New media is a form of dissemination of visual/spatial and written material via new
forms of technology, and the term is derived as a contrast to old media such as print,
radio, and TV (Frohne, 1999, p. 1). The fields of design in New Media include
multimedia, website design, interactive media, and computer animation.
10. The Bauhaus School was literally an educational institution and a school of design
(body of conceptual work) which followed the edict that form follows function, a
phrase coined by Louis Sullivan (cited by Findeli, 1990, p. 10). It was anti-bourgeois and
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anti-historical, so that it flowed from non-representational images found in pure form.
Materials were used for the beauty within the materials themselves (such as striation and
coloration in marble), not what could be imposed on them (elaborate carving, for
instance).
The Bauhaus, while it used the master/apprentice workshop method, was a
revolutionary school model that contributed much to design education. The
Bauhaus attempted to organize and codify the revolutionary ideas of the early
twentieth-century isms and protomodern experiments into an educational
method for the new industrial era. (McCoy, 1998)
Cullen (1998) describes the Bauhaus as the first to unite arts and crafts. Although the
experimental community only lasted 14 years, its ideology remains at the core of
modernist and postmodernist design teaching (p. 34). Berryman (1990) identifies it as
the birthplace of professional design and design education methodology with the
integration of architecture, product design, fine arts, crafts, theater, photography, and
graphic design (p. 5).
11. The word positionality, coined by Tisdell (1998, p. 139) refers to individual
qualifiers relative to ones gender, sexuality, religion, age, educational background,
economic status, dis/ability, and ethnicity. Sheared (1994), as mentioned in Tisdell, calls
these intersecting positions polyrhythmic realities (p. 74). Additionally, Tisdell writes
30
that ones positionality shifts as, for instance, one ages, or one changes religions, or one
becomes disabled, or one acquires an educational degree.
12. Pluralism, borrowed from philosophy, is often used synonymously with
multiculturalism. The meaning suggests more than one kind of ultimate reality, as
contrasted with monism and dualism (Websters, 1958, p. 650). Pluralistic curriculum
would attempt to address the cultural outlook, worldviews, gender, and cultural makeup
of the students in the classroom. It would attempt to look at students as members of
ethnic and gender groups and address curriculum to what is known of those groups, rather
than to individuals of shifting positionalities.
13. Diversity is often used in terms of power, and therefore the term is an indicator
of power struggles, and the power sharing of the dominant culture and non-dominant
cultures represented in a classroom and/or political or organizational entity. Wlodkowski
and Ginsberg (1995) suggest that there is an anthropological approach and a political
approach to diversity. Anthropological diversity compares human groups within the
context of all human groups. A political approach, they say, deals with power and class.
Applied to a learning situationdiversity conveys a need to respect similarities and
differences among human beings and to go beyond sensitivity to active and effective
responsiveness (p. 8-9).
14. The word multiculturalism was coined with an anti-racist social change agenda in
mind (Sleeter, 1996, p. 3). There is no one definition of multiculturalism, according to
31
Tisdell (1995). Since ism connotes an action, practice, condition, principles, or doctrines,
according to The Random House Dictionary of the English Language (1973, p. 755), then
multiculturalism would be multicultural action, practice, condition, principles or
doctrines. It is no wonder there is confusion around the term. Some authors use the word
to refer to the practice of single-group studies (such as Womens Studies or African-
American Studies), some for the examination of gender and disability concerns, others
for the conditions that result from issues of marginalization, and still others to actions
and reactions centered around ethnicity and power relations (Tisdell, 1995, p. 14).
Ukopokudu (1999), for instance, uses multiculturalism strictly as ethnic diversity in the
US (p. 1). Others, such as J. Borgford-Parnell (personal correspondence, February 28,
2000, used with permission), suggest that multiculturalism encompasses two conditions
of positionality: that of the ones own position in terms of a polyrhythmic reality
[Sheared], and the effects that position has on everything one does and comes to know;
and secondly, how one takes other peoples positionalities into account in ones dealings
with them. Multiculturalism will be used in this study to describe the broad and
shifting matrix of positionality issues of both the teacher and the students, and a set of
practices in the classroom that facilitate the use of such positionality as a legitimate filter
for equitable classroom behaviors and activities. Individual issues of positionalities, such
as gender, for instance, would be but one cell in the multicultural matrix.
32
15. Multicultural as a descriptor (multicultural students or multicultural practices, for
instance) will be used in this document to qualify a broad range of issues of positionality
(ethnicity, gender, socio-economic class, educational level, sexual orientation, religion, age,
and dis/ability) and of equity. Some writers (Groat and Ahrentzen, 1996, 1997) are even
more encompassing, including some issues of positionality that put a person who
otherwise might be part of the dominant culture into a marginalized population, such as a
student of European descent who is a single father, and who therefore cannot participate
in traditional studio activities and may encounter hidden agenda because of that issue, for
instance. These authors acknowledge that if the multicultural umbrella is too broad, there
will be no one left in the dominant culture. hooks (1994), as quoted in Nielsen and
Stambaugh (1998), suggests that as a practice, multicultural teaching and learning
involves activities that can facilitate the sharing of knowledge in ways that do not
reinscribe either colonialism or domination (p. 1). Multicultural design pedagogy in this
document is inclusive classroom strategies that not only giving agency and voice to all
who are constituents in the classroom, but also strategies that heighten awareness of
issues of positionality a design professional might encounter domestically and
internationally. It includes strategies that expose design students to pluralistic design
practices and to the contributions of designers who are not of the dominant culture in the
United States. Further, it describes strategies to employ issues of positionality to enrich
the teaching and learning experience.
33
16. Classroom inclusivity refers to tailoring course content in a pedagogical style
that reflects the gender, racial, and economic class makeup of the participants themselves
(Tisdell, 1995, p. 3). It does not necessarily mean diversity, according to Tisdell, because
the student population one reflects may not be diverse. Relativism, however, would
suggest that each person has a different combination of positionality factors and
inclusivity would reflect such issues of positionality.
17. Cultural competence, according to Howard-Hamilton, Richardson, and Shuford
(1998), is the development of a skill set of knowledge, skills and attitudes that promote
understanding and appreciation of ones own culture and that of others. The authors
suggest a holistic approach that includes all educational facilities including student
services, education, and administration. It is cultural competence, then, that enhance[s]
and promote[s] the growth of multicultural sensitivity, according to Howard-Hamilton
et al. (p. 5). J. Borgford-Parnell (personal communication, February 28, 2000, used with
permission) makes the point that cultural competence is not an end-state but is a
developmental continuum. I introduce the term multicultural competence to indicate a
developing set of skills with which one applies ones multicultural intelligence (see next
definition) to all issues of positionality including culture.
18. Cultural intelligence (CQ), as defined by James (1999) indicates an ability to
observe, learn and understand our own cultural bias as well as the behavior and bias of
others. (p. 1, July 18, 1999, Seattle Times, database pagination). For James, culture
34
affects all the basics, from social rules to foodsince there are, according to scientists,
no substantive biological differences between humans, early childhood socialization
probably creates our attachments to a particular way of life (p. 2). For James, the
challenge is understanding behavior and bias, regardless of whether the subject of inquiry
is domestic or international. I use the term multicultural intelligence to indicate a
sensitivity to and an understanding of the complex multicultural matrix, developed by
systematically confronting bias and privilege.
19. Transcultural refers to the interconnectedness of global cultures today. Media
exposure causes inevitable transculturality. Welsch (1996) argues that the concepts of
individual cultures lose their identity in the interconnected world we live in.
20. Globalization is the result of the world-wide access to the Internet in which
communication and marketing has changed the way business is done, has changed design
practices, and has changed culture. Ukopokudu (1999) suggests that it connotes an
interest in and an exposure to cultures other than ones domestic national culture.
21. World view (ontology) is the vision of the world one inhabits from within oneself
the view of the outside from inside. According to J. Borgford-Parnell (personal
communication, February 28, 2000, used with permission), it:
may be illustrated by such things as beliefs, assumptions, ways-of-knowing,
epistemology, and knowledge, and these are all dependent upon ones inherent
35
attributes such as gender, intelligence, physical and psychological condition, age,
and ability as well as assigned attributes such as ethnicity, race, and religion.
Positionality, therefore, is but one filter for an individuals worldview.
22. Structuralist connotes a rational approach to social structures, one defined by
those in power. Thus, the framework of social structures is formulated by those in
power for the benefit of those in power. It is incumbent upon the power structure to
present the social structure in such a way that those who are not in power will still work
for and help maintain the status quo. (Tisdell, 1998, p. 146).
23. Post-structuralist and post-modern are used interchangeably in education,
according to Tisdell (p. 144). They deal with close examination of the assumptions of
structuralism and deconstruction of categories (p. 145), particularly those that are
binary, focusing on constant transformations and reorganizations of personal
identifications and perceptions. In post-structuralist theory universals become relative;
Honor, the universal concept as defined by those in power becomes individually defined,
and, therefore, the relative honor.
24. Constructivism suggests that beliefs are reconstructed as an individuals
perception of reality changes, and are thus evolutionary and particular in nature. (Roth,
1999 and Merriam, 1998).
25. In design terms, post-modern is an acknowledgement that past social structures
were deconstructing from upper, middle, and lower class into groups of various sorts
36
based on other criteria than economic status, and that the formalism of modern
movements had become calcified. The visual response was the use of combinations of
saturated color and the use of details of historical reference combined with modern forms.
(Hauffe, 1998, p. 149).
26. World Wide Web (the Web, WWW) and Internet (the Net) are commonly used
interchangeably to describe the digital network that is global and dynamic in nature.
Referred to as the digital domain, the dot com world, and as cyberspace, it is a web of
markets, of visual and verbal communication that is driven by new technologies. It is
interactive and connects people and interests around the world. It grew out of linked
government and educational computers, and as computers became more widely used and
available to the public, so did the Web. The Web makes access to information available
to all who acquire a digital skill set rather than to a small elite group who had access to
good libraries. And thus, the Web has the potential to shift the power of information
from a small group to a much larger, more pluralistic group. The success and global nature
of the Internet presumes an energy source that can power computers, and a
communication infrastructure of phone or cable lines, or satellite link. The Web,
combined with technological advances in computers, has pluralized access to information
and communication in the last ten years. Additionally, because of global access, designs
relationship to the web (not only the marketing of goods and services, but also the design
of web portals themselves) reveals a need for multicultural intelligence.
37
27. According to Brookfield (1995), hegemonic assumptions are those assumptions
which people think are in their own best interests, but which actually work against them
in the long term. Those in power benefit from hegemony. Brookfield suggests that
hegemony becomes deeply embedded, part of the cultural air we breathethe
conspiracy of the normal. (p. 15). Cultural hegemony, then would be the perpetuation
of the institutions, norms, and thought that help keep the dominant culture preeminent to
the determent of minority or marginalized cultures. In fact, it is the accepted ideas by the
dominant culture which create marginalization.
38
CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW
Design education has always had a direct link to design practice. It is the practice
of design that is changing dynamically in response to digital media, worldwide markets as
well as targeted micro markets, and in response to the pluralistic nature of both student
bodies and the buying public. How can we as design educators formulate classroom
strategies and methodology to address these changes? Thus, the purpose of this study is to
identify the strategies of experienced post-secondary design educators who address the
multicultural character of their student bodies in their design classrooms, and as well as
their strategies for preparing students for the multicultural and global nature of
contemporary design practices.
In this chapter, literature will be grouped in four areas, including design as a
discipline itself and its history, design education and professional education, the issues
surrounding contemporary design education and its stakeholders, and multiculturalism and
the impact of global markets and micromarkets on design education.
The first of these areas will be the literature that examines the nature of design
itself and its historical foundation. Since the field of design as we know it and practice it
today is less than eighty years old, designers are just beginning to wrestle with a definitive
framework and to examine where design has come from in order to aid in the
understanding of future directions of the field.
39
Secondly, the literature that informs design education, professional design
education, and professional education in general will be examined. Design education
prepares designers for their professional practices much like medical education prepares
doctors for theirs. There is an ongoing direct link between professional practice and
education, with each impacting the other in profoundly dynamic ways.
Thirdly, the literature that discusses several contemporary issues in design
education will be examined including global challenges in design, and pluralistic,
multicultural, and diversity issues in design education from the standpoint of both a
changing student body and from that of market-driven considerations.
Finally, the literature that grounds multiculturalism will be examined, leading to
that of multicultural education and multiculturalism in art and design pedagogy.
What Is Design?
In order to examine the field of design, we must frame the subject itself with a
definition. This body of work attempts that very definition with mixed results. The
definition of design depends on the framework of examination, but includes the body of
knowledge that is called design, the process of designing, the product designed, a
framework of principles and elements used to express design, an open-ended method of
problem solving, even way to frame organizational system, among others (Findeli, 1990).
Such confusion is exacerbated by any number of writers who would consider the subject.
Some would say that design is as fundamental as communication itself and is therefore the
40
visual common metalanguage (Hastings, 1998, p. 2). Most would say that planning,
organized activity, and visual-spatial order were the common tie to all design fields
(Berryman, 1990, Lauer, 1995, Wong & Wong, 1994). Still others would pinpoint a way
of thinking or a method of problem solving as a definition of design (Goldsby-Smith,
1996).
The word design, according to Hauffe (1998), is from the Italian disegno, meaning
to draft or draw a work and was used in pre-industrial revolution terms as a sketch from
which works were made. With the industrial revolution came the separation of the
designer from the crafter, and the individually constructed custom work from mass
production. The use of artistic media and visual communication from designer to maker
had to be implemented to facilitate the fabrication of the work and the production of its
multiples.
Design has an established code of principles (harmony, unity, variety, balance,
movement, rhythm, emphasis, proportion, and economy) and elements or tools (line,
color, shape, form, texture, space, and value) which some would argue are common to all
the arts including literature, dance, music, film, and new media (Davis, 1998). The media
(artistic implements and materials) employed in design are also varied, depending on
which subset one explores, some of which are common to the fine arts and fine craft,
including metal, plastics, graphite, ink, film, digital media, paint, brick, glass, organic
matter, and the digital realm, among many others.
41
What, then, could landscape architecture and new media design, or graphic design
and architecture, have in common? One commonality among all design professions is
problem solving in service of an external impetus rather than the individual and internally
driven impulse of expression in the fine arts. Where a designer serves a clients needs, an
artist serves his/her own muse -- those internal signals that determine what will be
created. Design is therefore market driven, although aesthetics are certainly a determiner
and individual style may be inherent. Davis (1998) suggests that design is user-centered,
not artist-centered. Further, she writes that As an inherently interdisciplinary activity,
design addresses the social, economic, cultural, cognitive, physical, and technological
dimensions of a situation and takes into account the complex systems of which any
design solution must be a part (p. 3).
Fig. 1: The difference between art and design
Personal expression Developed for a clients
needs
Creator (ideator) is maker tools are the same Ideator is
separate from maker
Limited edition multiples Multiples intended to be
produced
End user may or may not be a stakeholder End user always a
stakeholder
Another commonality among design professions is process by which the problem
solving is done, called design process. This is an open-ended alternative to the scientific
method Davis says, in which the problem is identified, research is conducted, multiple
42
options are developed, prototyped, and critiqued to arrive at a viable solution for the
client (p. 3). This design process is one that is used throughout design, with variations
particular to specific disciplines. In this way, the designer does not have to wait until
internal muses drive the artist to expression, but can be employed as a step-by-step
method by which a clients needs can be satisfied.
Design once found its manifestation in the design of exterior environments
(Landscape Architecture), structure (Architecture), interior environments (Interior
Design), products and transportation (Industrial Design) and the print media (Graphic
Design). With the advent of digital tools, design is also applied to the digital domain as
well as other larger applications, including intangibles as well such as services and
processes. Garant (1998), in a paper delivered to the Conference on Education for the
Industrial Design Society of America, furthers the link between what once was design and
design as it is becoming: Design creates a bridge a neutral passage between the real
and the unreal, the tangible and the intangible (p. 4).
Some resources suggest that the fourth order of design (the first is word or
symbol of graphic design, the second the object of industrial design, the third the
management of the processes) leads to organizational applications outside the traditional
design subject matter for such design thinking (Golsby-Smith, 1996). Thus, design
process could be applied to many systems of organization, to psychological and
interpersonal mediation, to a system of problem solving with a plethora of applications
43
outside the scientific method. Hauffe (1998) writes that everything from computer
programs to processes and organizational forms, services, corporate design, and the image
of public personalities is designed (pp. 18-19).
So, according to several authors (Hauffe, 1998, Davis, 1998, Goldsby-Smith,
1996), design is now a multidimensional discipline that draws from behavioral and social
sciences such as sociology and psychology, from scientific principles such as the laws of
physics in built structure, as well as from technology, and such as advances in plastics
and composite materials. Roth (1999) posits that the traditional view of the designer as
creative genius or (worse) stylist is evolving to the perception of the designer as a team
member, interpreter of complex systems, communicator, and problem-solver (p. 20).
Therefore, yet another commonality among the subsets of design is the interdisciplinary
nature of design that intermingles art, the behavioral and social sciences as well as
physical sciences, and current technology.
Some definitions of design include ways of knowing that are particular to design
and the designer. Writing in a 1976 report to the British government, Nigel Cross writes
(as quoted by Davis, 1998) that:
the sciences value objectivity, rationality, neutrality, and a concern for the truth:
The humanities value subjectivity, imagination, commitment, and a concern for
justice.[The designerly way of knowing] involves a combination of knowledge
and skills from both the sciences and the humanitiesDesign has its own distinct
44
things to know, ways of knowing them, and ways of finding out about them.
(formatting from Davis, p. 3)
Shannon (1990) describes designing as using all forms of knowledge to change
situations as they exist for the better. For this author, design activity happens along a
continuum from symbolic to concrete, from conceptual to actual physical manifestation.
Shannon thinks that design is marginalized because its constructs are holistic, but our
society is dualistic and that both do not willingly acknowledge each others legitimacy.
He believes that design can be a unifying in family, school and community, and hopes to
integrate design studies and design as a way of knowing and organizing decision making at
the K-12 level so students have access to the analytic systems of design as well as the
hands-on application of their solutions. Designingcannot be automatic. It always
forces critical thinking, judgment personal involvement [and] always evokes feelings of
pride and accomplishment (p. 40).
Design, then, can be summarized as a multidisciplinary, multifaceted undertaking
that serves a client through a specific problem solving process with the aid of an aesthetic
code of principles and elements manifested through artistic materials. Its applications in
the contemporary marketplace are informing new areas even as its own foundations are
shifting to accommodate technological advances.
A Brief History of Design
45
Design, throughout its various disciplines, is framed by both historical and
contemporary popular culture of Western Europe and the United States, and responds to
that culture on both a micro and a macro level. Thus the tracing of design history parallels
that of the popular culture. Since that culture was Occidental in nature from the inception
of the concept of design, and dominated by a certain class, gender, and educational level, it
is the dominant culture of the United States and Western Europe that will be examined in
this next subsection.
The industrial revolution made inexpensive products, produced by the thousands,
available to the working class in capitalist societies, and designers worked to make these
products intelligently designed as well as economically constructed, according to Hauffe
(1998). These designers included Behrens, Tatlin, Lissitzky, Mondrian, Gropius,
Moholy-Nagy, Meyer, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Aalto, among others. All
European males, they were the avant-guarde, incorporating what was viewed as new
thinking, better thinking, and thinking that eschewed the past as corrupt. Women are
mentioned in Hauffes text as textile artists, and people of color and other traditionally
marginalized populations were not represented. The working class was not consulted
about the value or quality of the products they consumed, but those in the dominant
culture assumed that what they understood as intelligently designed would be accepted as
such by those who purchased the inexpensive and mass-produced product. This very
assumption, that one group of people could determine what was intelligent and good for
46
other groups of people, has been pervasive in design itself, and the elitism represented by
this attitude is one of the issues with which design and design education struggle today.
Cullen (1998) suggests that the ideal of the heroic European craftsman, whose talent was
measured in intuition and skillpersists, even though it excludes at least half the
designers in practice today (p. 34). Doesnt that other half deserve the same curricular
and strategic educational attention that the traditional designer does? This is one of the
compelling issues that drives this study.
To persuade the public that these intelligently designed products were worthy of
purchase, advertising was born. Graphic design, which had once been the tool of public
notices in the form of books, playbills, and posters, was thus employed to enhance the
attractiveness of these mass produced products.
The way we think about design in the United States and Western Europe and
articulate its principles comes to us via the Bauhaus school of design. The Bauhaus was
literally a school of design as well as a conceptual body of philosophy and artistic
discipline. Founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany in 1919, the Bauhaus
attempted to unify art, handwork, and industry. Functionalism and modernism were the
twin tenants of the first Bauhaus, with the mantra, coined by Louis Sullivan, (cited by
Findeli, 1990, p. 10) form follows function. The Bauhaus faculty could not escape the
aesthetics of the day, and so Russian suprematism and constructivism and the formalism
47
of DeStijl created a framework for a rational, technical orientation added to modernism
and functionalism.
The clean unornamental forms of the modern style had grown out the theory of
functionalism, according to which form arose from function and all decoration was
unnecessary even harmful, because it got in the way of industrial mass
production and unnecessarily inflated the cost of manufactured goods. (Hauffe,
1998, p. 80)
Political and economic forces changed what might have been a short-lived, albeit
internationally recognized, school of design into an international and extremely influential
phenomenon. Pressures in Nazi Germany forced a Diaspora of intellectuals and artists,
among others, and those associated with the Bauhaus fled Germany for universities in
other countries including the United States. Hauffe (1998) profiles many of these
professors and designers, including Walter Gropius, who came to the United States in
1937 and became an instructor at Harvard University, Hannes Meyer, director of the
Bauhaus in 1928, who became a professor at an academy of architecture in Moscow, and
later practiced in Switzerland and Mexico, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, an internationally
known architect, who was the last director of the Bauhaus in Germany until 1933, and
became director of the Illinois Institute of Architecture in Chicago, and Laszlo Moholy-
Nagy, who instructed at the German Bauhaus in the mid-twenties and came to the United
States in 1937, among others. The New Bauhaus surfaced in Chicago in 1937 under
48
Moholy-Nagy, becoming the School of Design in Chicago in 1938. Moholy-Nagy added
the third tenet to Gropiuss art + technology formula so that the School of Design in
Chicago focused on the synthesis of art + technology + science.
Thus, an International Style was born, fostered by clean lines, free of
ornamentation, with the materials and the form carrying the design message. Architecture,
furniture, and print took the lead in displaying such a style, and the work of its
practitioners, Aalto, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Breuer, and others was exhibited
and collected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, underlining the
importance of the philosophy and its manifestations as well as giving it a legitimacy equal
to that of fine art.
A wave of American consumerism of the 1950s followed the privations of World
War II when all production had been geared toward a war effort, and pushed the American
design aesthetic toward styling as a means of increasing profits (Hauffe, 1998, p. 108).
Thus the insatiable consumption of product, and advertising employed to entice the
buyer, became partners in moving design in the United States toward commercial activity
rather than theoretical and philosophical activity. Early designers were
multidisciplinarians. Raymond Loewy, for example, a French designer, emigrated to the
United States and became the best known industrial designer of the post-World War II
era, responsible for designs such as the symbol for Shell Oil, for the Lucky Strike cigarette
packaging, the Greyhound bus, and the Studebaker Avanti.
49
By the end of the 1950s, as the Marshall Plan helped reconstruct Europe and
economies recovered worldwide, companies, which once limited their rapid growth to the
United States, began to cast their cumulative gaze toward the consuming classes abroad.
Graphic design responded by helping to coordinate corporate identity programs. One of
these graphic designers was extremely influential, both as a designer and as an educator.
According to Hurlburt (1999), Paul Rand was a primary mover in fusing of visual ideas
and persuasive communication (p. 120). Hurlburt quotes Rand:
Even if it is true that commonplace advertising and exhibitions of bad taste are
indicative of the mental capacity of the man in the street, the opposing argument
is equally valid. Bromidic advertising catering to the bad taste merely perpetuates
that mediocrity and denies him one of the most easily accessible means of
aesthetic development. (p. 122)
Thus, Rand perpetuates that long-held notion that designers are the arbiters of good taste.
Who were designers drawn from? They were from and of the dominant culture -- that
particular set of gender, ethnicity, educational level, and economic class. The assumptions
of the designers then were that all citizens of the first world would want to be like those
depicted in advertising images, and that advertising was targeted to the masses, the
underlying assumptions being a desire for homogeneity.
The influential Rand was educated at Pratt Institute, the Parsons School, and the
Art Students League. Mology-Nagy described him as an idealist and a realist using the
50
language of the poet and businessman (p. 130). As an educator at Pratt Institute,
Copper Union, and Yale University, Rand was as influential as he was in practice. He
thought that study of the theories and history of design served only to clutter the minds
of young designers and that their expression should be purely responsive to the needs of
the client through their personal filter (Swanson, 1994, p. 70). Students of design were
from the dominant culture, as were their professors and clients. The dominant culture and
the popular culture informed each other in a very narrow way in a closed cycle. So
influential was Rand and his theory of an unsullied and uninformed designer, whose
reactive response was so highly honed as to be the primary filter and progenitor of visual
information, that design as a field of inquiry and a body of knowledge has only recently
begun to slip from Rands orbit and to examine itself in a methodical way. It is only
recently, too, that design has widened its focus as world-wide commerce, and a rising
pluralistic middle class has given rise to design practitioners who understand micro-
markets as well as world-wide markets and have a broader and more informed view.
Design as a field of inquiry and body of knowledge only recently seeks to examine
itself in a systematic way. As with all historical accounts, what is left out is as significant
as what is included. No effort has been made here to discuss either the influence of Asian
aesthetics in the United States and Europe, or the influence of Mexican and Latin
American art and murals on mid-century design in the United States. Women in design
are not included in the pantheon of stellar practitioners, nor considered pivotal to
51
concept, except in the applied arts of textile and wall covering design, until at least the
1970s, with few exceptions, and then they were partners in design, co-designers, rather
than sole designers (Charles and Ray Eames, for instance). Hence, what has been
recorded as design history is a rather incomplete picture of a field in the beginning stages
of self-examination. Further work in this area might include a history of design that was
exclusively formed by practitioners of marginalized populations, however difficult it
might be to cherry-pick examples.
The Link between Professional Education, Design Education, and Design
Practices
While many styles have been employed in design, the connection between science,
art, and technology has remained a constant thread. The corps of recognized designers
from the dominant culture has also in the last decade been penetrated by those of the
marginalized populations, such as women, people of color, and the disabled, among
others. As global markets grow for goods produced in a cooperating group of countries,
and as more and more people from various groups in countries around the world
accumulate income with which to purchase those goods, design, designers, and design
educators must shift assumptions long held about mass markets to address those very
global socio-economic changes.
An overview of professional education and its history
Since the practice of design is undertaken by professional designers, the first
literature in this section to be examined is that which informs professional education.
52
Professional education trains students to enter a practice of one sort or another, and
shares many commonalties among disciplines. Practices range from medicine to
psychological counseling, design to education, social work to law. The educational
system for professional education trains post-graduates with some form of
apprenticeship. From the purely theoretical and conceptual to the concrete and applied,
philosophies for such education in the United States and Europe are also spread across a
broad spectrum. From time to time, one has held sway over the other, to give way once
again.
The Greeks, in the Age of Enlightenment, about 550 BC, are often given credit for
the beginnings of educational theory (Mitchell, 1999, p. 1). Much of the methodology of
the Greeks, however, was based on the Hindu Upanishads, a group of treatises,
composed in the Himalayas between the sixth and eighth century BC. The Upanishads
were transferred in verbal form in dialogue, question and answer, and symbolism and
metaphor. Building upon this tradition, the Greeks, particularly Socrates and Aristotle,
focused on training the mind of free men to engage in their society. There was an
educational aim of developing an engaged and moral citizenry as well as a method, that of
problem solving, critique and modification, and defense. This problem-based learning was
a shift away from an educational emphasis on the development of physical attributes and
practical skills, although Socrates did support apprenticeships. Socrates posed problems
and through dialogue, engaged in a question and answer methodology to refine and hone
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the intellectual skills of his students. Still today we struggle with this dichotomy of
practical skills and purely intellectual pursuits in professional education.
It was a Roman intellectual of the first century BC, Cicero, who brought
educational philosophy home to the individual. While the Greeks wanted an educated
citizenry to support the state, Cicero suggested that the primary function of education
was to inculcate humanitas, by which he meant the attributes of the individual whose
peculiarly human capacities had been developed to their full potential (Mitchell, 1999, p.
2).
Mitchell (1999) writes that the importance given by both the Greeks and the
Romans to the development of mind is the foundation of liberal education, as we know it
today. Cicero envisioned graduates who were highly literate, articulate, broadly
knowledgeable, intellectually able, and morally enlightened (p. 3).
The first disciplines to have a role in professional education were those in law,
medicine, and divinity in universities in Europe throughout the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance. Engineering was added to other professional educational disciplines during
the Industrial Revolution, and the partnership between universities and industry was
formed. Once there was a practical application at hand, the debate returned once again to
theoretical and conceptual vs. practical and applied, and which of them should be the
purview of the university. Should or could a liberal education include a vocational
component? Cardinal Newman, an influential theologian and philosopher writing in
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England during the nineteenth century, posits:
Professional training must be preceded by a liberal education that provides the
individual with the intellectual capacity and body of theoretical knowledge that
can link his professional training to the broader world of learning and bridge the
gap between craftsman and intellectual. (Mitchell, 1999, p. 3)
Thus, educators of the day found themselves not only in an age-old debate about the
framework and purpose of education, but also attempting to respond to technological
innovations and societal paradigm shifts. Professional educators today are similarly
engaged.
Contemporary Issues in Professional Education
Shulman (1998) examines Deweys 1904 work about teacher education, and the
partnership between the laboratory (the university) and practical skills (apprenticeship)
as foundation to educational theory for professional education. Shulman also examines
another writer from the early twentieth century, Abraham Flexner, whose work is
fundamental to medical education. Flexner felt that grounding in the sciences was
essential to medical practice, and that a firm and broad undergraduate education must
precede clinical application. So influential was Flexners program that it is only recently
that clinical application has begun to be integrated into undergraduate programs and not
deferred until an undergraduate program was completed. In terms of stakeholders in this
enterprise, the university was the forum for undergraduate education and the hospital for
55
clinical application. Flexners theories effectively closed medical schools that did not
include a broad liberal arts education, including most of those for women and people of
color.
Professional education can be viewed as a generic enterprise, according to
Shulman. There are six characteristics of a profession that determine how an education
for such should be framed:
(a) obligations of service to others, such as a calling;
(b) understanding of a scholarly or theoretical kind;
(c) a domain of skilled performance or practice;
(d) the exercise of judgment under conditions of unavoidable uncertainty;
(e) the need for learning from experience as theory and practice interact;
(f) and a professional community to monitor quality and aggregate
knowledge. (p. 6, database format)
The first of these, obligation to the public as a whole, brings to mind the pursuit
of intelligent design for the use of the masses in the previous section on the history of
design, although Shulman suggests that this civic dimension might be underlying but not
dominant.
It is the second, the theoretical base, that engenders a great deal of debate and is
challenged by technological innovation. Professions are a complex and dynamic
interweaving of practice and theory that pulses with interactive challenge and change.
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Theories inform practice which in turn informs theories. Shulman argues that perhaps
academic knowledge is an entitlement, a rite of passage through which a professional must
pass to achieve permission to apply theory to actual practice.
Practice is where professionals apply their theoretical knowledge to real world
situations. It is preceded by some sort of apprenticeship in which students acquire
professional judgment (student teaching and student nursing, design internships,
architects apprenticeships, or medical residencies, for example), carefully supervised by
an active professional. Shulman suggests that it is in this practicum that learners look
back at their theoretical background and begin to denigrate its usefulness, perhaps
exacerbated by the comments of active professionals themselves. Often, however, it is
the academy, says the author, that is the most radical and reformative, and the
professional who is entrenched in outdated technique. It is the newly-degreed graduate
who creates a personal framework of theory transfer to aid in practical matters, and it is
in this rich learning area that much discomfort is encountered. Learning from experience,
therefore, requires both the systematic, prototype-centered, theoretical knowledge
characteristic of the academy and the more fluid, reactive, prudential reasoning
characteristic of practice (p. 9).
Professions imply community, says Shulman. In this community is a databank of
professional experience and education, and the particulars of the profession are informed
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by that experience and education. The body of knowledge is greater than any one
practitioner can embody, but is a pool from which all practitioners can draw.
Other conceptual work that reiterates the tensions inherent in professional
education centers on counseling education. Here the author (Demmitt, 1999) suggests
that students construct a framework, based on theories, that ground their interest in the
subject. This framework serves as a roadmap to guide them in knowledge acquisition.
Deconstruction then occurs as one theory gives way to another in a natural sequence of
meaning making. Finally, reconstruction occurs when the student changes theory from
an outside controlling agent to an internal guiding force (p. 3 database pagination).
Reconstruction is the integration of theory with practice and skills with personal style.
Theory, then, according to this author, has both value and limitations, and theory building
occurs at the highest levels of personal practice.
Another issue in professional education is the formalized collaboration of places
of practice with educational institutions. While this occurs often with the best medical
schools and in industry, it is in its nascence in other fields. Quatroche, Duff, Anderson,
and Herring (1998) write about professional development schools (PDS) which are
closely tied to schools of education to foster novice teacher education and practica. These
PDSs have as their goals the support of student learning, the support of professional
education for the novice and for veteran teachers, and to further research related to
practice. Other fields, however, struggle with the appropriateness of closely allied
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educational and professional institutions. In industrial design, many projects and areas of
inquiry are supported financial by industry, but debate rages about the skewing of the
educational format to suit the particular industrial needs of the supporting company.
Field experience and real world application would seem to conflict with clear objectives
and the freedom of educational intellectual inquiry.
Those disciplines that are just emerging, such as new media design and digital
informational design, are suggesting a broader, more interdisciplinary base for its students
so they might be broadly well informed rather than narrowly defined. Murray (1999)
writes about interactive design bringing several disciplines together, including visual and
verbal skills, an understanding of cognitive processes, with critical thinking and creative
abilities to be able to invent new conventions of interaction (p. 1). Currently, says the
author, those interested in this field might study library or computer science, graphic
design, media studies, educational theory, among many others. So, the new digital design
disciplines inherit the old conundrum. Broad and liberal or narrow and specialized?
Practical or theoretical?
Studies that inform the conceptual literature on professional education are those
that deal with future planning and the world of professional work. Hammick (1999), in
his review of Developing Learning in Professional Education by Taylor (1999) reiterates
such a tension, but says that this tension is healthy in assessing whether educational
programs are providing graduates who are market-ready. She also suggests that
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professional education and professional practice check and balance each other in a rapidly
changing commercial environment.
Change is a constant theme in professional education, since the world of commerce
is undergoing revolutionary evolution in global marketing, strategies of micro and macro
marketing, and methods to prepare graduates for such a changing climate are being
devised. Just as one curricular change is made, another needs be constructed to supplant
it because the assumptions on which the first plan were based have been proven
inadequate by the marketplace. Gingerich, Kaye, and Bailey (1999) discuss ways to
clearly specify desired outcomes and methods of assessment based on those outcomes.
They mention that competency-based education has declined in favor since it was
difficult to reduce competencies to specific behaviors that could be taught. Accrediting
bodies as well as graduates and professionals alike called for more educational
accountability in the design of curriculum, and so changes were made to outcomes-based,
rather than competency-based, curricula whose validity and acquisition could be
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measured. These researchers outlined these principles as a framework for assessment:
(a) learning outcomes determine curriculum;
(b) outcomes are defined as abilities;
(c) course objectives are tied to the abilities;
(d) assessment occurs throughout the educational process;
(e) self-assessment becomes part of learning;
(f) assessment leads to continuous program improvement;
(g) focus on learning rather than teaching (3 database pagination).
Gingerich, et al. identified stakeholder groups so assessments could be tracked.
They also focused on diversity as an issue to deal with a more pluralistic world of work.
Six levels were identified, from self-awareness through the development of knowledge and
skills to deal with issues of diversity, and finally, to a lifelong plan to continue learning
about diversity issues. The administrators of this program not only consulted
professionals, students, and accreditors, but also consulted faculty, resulting in total
support of their programs. The authors concluded that Our implementation of an
ability-based approach in general, and the diversity ability in particular, has helped us
shift our attention away from what we are teaching to what our students are learning (p.
7).
Van Wieringen (1999) discusses using scenario planning for vocational and adult
education, and outlines the uses of such planning to prepare for a changing commercial
61
world. In his paper, he shows how trends can be broken down around social and
economic divisions, experts sought out in each area, and then the information gleaned
analyzed to find commonalties upon which to base planning. Not only does this type of
strategic planning produce a favored scenario, it also produces secondary and tertiary
positions which could be implemented if the primary scenario proves faulty. A more
useful scenario might be one which has a menu from which one could choose in each of
the necessary sectors so that plans could be flexible and adaptable to rapid and dynamic
changes in the global marketplace mix and match options within an operational
framework.
A British study, which examined problem-based learning (PBL), suggests that
such a method is key to professional education (Charlin, Mann, and Hansen, 1998). In
this method, a query is proposed as a fundamental educational approach. This approach
is essentially student-centered rather than teacher-centered, and the learning is self-
directed. Here the authors suggest the focus is on learners as active processors of
information; new knowledge is grounded in previous experience and knowledge and
builds upon it; meaningful knowledge must be contextual; and learners are active in
organizing and elaborating on their individual knowledge base. Further, there must be an
element of practice, or practical application of the knowledge gained, to make it applicable
and transferable to professional practice. The educator is then a facilitator, modeler and
navigator. While this is a plausible scheme for the adult learner, each learner must be
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mature enough to take responsibility for his/her learning and have enough experience to
choose a valuable direction in the learners eyes. Some authors in the adult education field
(Knowles, 1972, Hiemstra, 1994, Camp, 1994) suggest that while self-direction is an
espoused hallmark of adult and life-long learning, it is not necessarily embodied in the
student at a post-secondary level who may or may not have reached the level of maturity
required for self-direction.
In conclusion, much of the work in professional education stresses both the
tensions in and need for cooperation between the educational and the practice sectors.
Best-case scenarios are those that are market-responsive and symbiotic in nature
(between professional practice and professional education), as well as those that can be
measured to assess accountability and responsiveness. Response to change was a major
theme mentioned in all the work considered for this section, although the pace of the
change is so rapid today that it is difficult for either the professional practitioner or the
professional educator to respond rapidly enough.
Some difficulties encountered with this material are that there is little mention of
the need for continuing professional education. The constant theme seems to be that the
relationship between professional practice and professional education is a closed loop,
but there are other ways to ensure market preparedness. It is here that continuing
professional education through the academy and through professional organizations finds
its usefulness, despite its many detractors, although that is a subject for another day.
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Another difficulty is that professional practice sometimes finds itself slipping
behind technologically, and so expects that new graduates will not only have a
professional skill set, current market savvy, but also will have technological superiority to
those already in practice. This is a difficult task for education to assume, since with the
introduction of each new class, an old one must be sacrificed. Which will it be? It would
be useful to conduct a systematic study of new graduates from professional programs,
graduates after two years, and graduates after five years, to determine if there is any
commonality among them regarding general preparedness to which professional education
can respond.
The juggernaut of education and its review and accreditation system is a difficult
ship to turn, and is thus lethargically responsive to market changes that are swift and
seemingly mercurial. Could improvements be made to educational systems that would
build in response to change? Could professional practice feed the educational system
with up-to-date information that would allow that system to respond to those needs in a
timely way? Perhaps a procedural framework could be established to implement a quick
response without trying to redirect the whole ship of an educational institution or to
reconstruct a degree program within that institution.
Should the educational institution, in fact, be responsive to professional practice
or should it deepen theory and broaden exposure to other educational fields? This is the
subject of considerable debate in an arm of professional education, called design education.
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Design Education as a Type of Professional Education
If the definition of design is amorphous, then getting a grip on design education is
equally difficult--rather like collecting fog in a basket. How do we educate students to be
designers when we cannot define design itself? Over one thousand universities in the
United States offer design as a major, so, while there may be disagreement on what design
is, there certainly is demand for its study (McCoy, 1990). Design education is a type of
professional education in that it prepares students for a practice upon graduation. This
next group of literature deals with the struggle to frame design education in an era of
dynamic change. The first group of literature to be examined in the following section
attempts to define design education, and the second is that which deals with the
challenges to design education as the millenium turns.
The History of Design Education
Thompson (1998) includes historical information about various nineteenth century
design schools, including Rhode Island School of Design and the Philadelphia School of
Design. Both schools were interested in educating designers to meet the needs of
machine manufacturing (p. 132). Women, as a targeted group, were also trained in the
applied arts and, according to a study referenced by Thompson, used this training to
access or to maintain status in the middle class. Thompson continues by suggesting that
theories of design education are based on how knowledge is acquired, processed, and
applied. She says that the evolution of design education is complex because many threads
65
appear to be influential, and it is the interaction of various disciplines with political,
economic, and technological forces that interferes with a clear historical path and even a
clear definition of design itself.
As has been discussed earlier in this paper, much of the way design education is
structured at the post-secondary level in the twentieth century is traceable to the Bauhaus
School in Weimar, Germany. There, Walter Gropius, its founder, concluded that design
itself was a multidisciplinary endeavor that occurred at the intersection of art and
technology. Reformed in the United States in Chicago in the late 1930s under Laszlo
Moholy-Nagy, the school struggled with the balance of content and pedagogy. Moholy-
Nagy added science to the Gropiuss design duality, so that at the New Bauhaus, art,
technology and science framed design itself. Findeli (1990) contends that if the school is
content-driven, then the curriculum is vocational; if the school is pedagogy-driven, it is
process-oriented. This dualism can be destructive or dynamic, and it was Moholy-Nagy
who tried to convert this polarity into a constructive dynamic (p. 8). Findeli suggests
that Moholy-Nagy developed an organic-functionalist method [that] has to proceed
from eyesight to insight for a proper outline of the design problem (p. 12). According to
this author, organic functionalism was framed by Goethes epistemological system which
underscored the intuitive processes, and the methodology of Deweys pragmatic
philosophy which suggested that all human beings are contextually situated with internal
and external stimuli, and that their learning is framed by that context. The teacher was
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seen as a facilitator to guide the student in discovering his/her own potential in the model
that Moholy-Nagy devised.
Classic education was externally driven and progressive education internally
driven, but both lead to excesses according to Findeli. Moholy-Nagy intended to frame
design education in a way that used these extremes in a constructively dynamic way.
Findeli argues that there should be changes in design education content areas to parallel
technological advances, but the pedagogical methods of a broad foundation in preliminary
courses, followed by three years of specialized workshops, should remain the same.
Theoretical Framework of Design Education
Design thinking is a form of problem solving with multiple variables which are
tested against effectiveness criteria and employed on behalf of a client. There are several
writers who consider the topic conceptually and in studies, as well as postulate about its
wider applications in systems of various sorts. McDermott (1998), in an address to the
Industrial Design Society of Americas 1998 Conference on Education, suggests that
design education should begin with learning to think like a designer. This, she says, can
take two paths: one path deals with the product, and the other deals with the process of
open-ended problem solving. Design education should be about learning rather than
teaching, according to McDermott. Students should have verbal, visual, and applied skills
reinforced to arrive at a satisfactory learning experience.
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Shannon (1990) has created a design curriculum that would be implemented
throughout life-long learning so that judgment, intention, and values would inform all
learning. This curriculum would be hands-on and be inclusive of all learners, all societal
groups in school and community, and interdisciplinary. Shannon writes:
things do not just happen. We do them. We design life[In this curriculum]
Students learn how history relates to technology, how math relates to language,
how art relates to science, etc.; and on an ongoing basis, how designing, in all of
Howard Gardners realms of intelligence, relates to living. (p. 40)
He thinks that if design thinking (open-ended problem solving) would be introduced in the
K-12 curriculum as a broad problem solving technique, using the aforementioned
judgment, intention, and values, that cohesion might be found for the increasing polarities
of society. This larger application of design thinking would in no way diminish its link to
visual-spatial skills, but enlarge societys capacities to structure itself in a meaningful way
rather than allowing that structure to be imposed by a narrow profit-seeking
constituency.
In 1995, Print (a magazine dedicated to graphic design) undertook an informal
survey which was the basis of their 1995 November/December issue. This survey was
mailed to graphic design program directors of two hundred seventy-four four-year degree-
granting institutions in the U.S. and Canada, and yielded a response rate of above thirty-
five percent. Intended to gather information about the current state of undergraduate
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education, many issues that will be discussed in the next section were revealed. A
polarization of theoretical frameworks was exposed that bears mentioning, according to
Lewis, (1995), the author of the report. These poles were described as reflexive and
prescriptive (p. 72). They wrote:
Many educational objectives are somewhere between an oppositionally related
area of emphasis, such as conceptual to technical, theoretical to pragmatic,
expressive to rational, individual to collaborative, process to product, abstract to
concrete, functional to stylistic, depth to breadth, liberal arts to fine arts, and
intuitive to analytical. (p. 72)
Other differences in programs reflected the nature of professional education previously
mentioned, including the theme that those programs that prepare students directly for
professional practice are generally technologically oriented and maintain a close
relationship with practitioners in the field, and those programs that are more liberal arts
based see formal educationas a tool to maximize an individuals potential in all areas
(p. 72).
It is clear, then, that despite the array of design definitions, the framework of
design education at the post-secondary level is both humanist and functionalist,
conceptual and pragmatic, theoretical and market-driven, and that the axial push and pull
of these opposing interests produces both process-driven and product-driven programs
for design. Because design does not have a narrow definition, such as physics,
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chemistry, or biology (Buchanan, 1997, p. 64), its study is also imprecise. Design
education seeks a framework from practice, perhaps, because of this very lack of clarity
in definition.
Some would say that the institutionally sanctioned accreditors are demanding
marketplace relevance and skills for the traditional academic departments, but there are
financial pressures, too. These include the demands of the students themselves. In order
to pay for student loans, students must be able to obtain positions that pay enough to do
so, and hence, must have developed a skill set to accomplish that goal. Financial
considerations are a closed loop in more trade-oriented schools, since in order to qualify
for loan packages, these institutions must be able to produce a proven percentage of
employable graduates.
Contemporary Issues and Challenges in Design Education
It is difficult to read about design education today without entering a debate about
its future directions. There are several challenges to consider: some arise in professional
practice, some are a response to technological advances, and some are the result of the
tension between professional practice and design education itself. Educational challenges
coalesce around the debate between design as a liberal study of a conceptual nature and
design as a practical study around a skill set particular to each design practice. Generally,
the practice-derived challenges target the digital world and the incredible changes that
computers and the Internet have wrought in the design fields themselves. Not only are
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these dynamic changes apparent in practice and in design education, but the rapid pace of
change presents its own problems.
The theory/content debate, revisiting the Greeks
Drucker, in an interview with Steven Heller in Print (Nov/Dec 1997), suggests that
design as a discipline does not need theory, and, in fact, that the employment of theory
without intuition to the practice of design results in stilted work. On the other hand, she
suggests that designers (as separate from the practice of design) need theory as a way of
addressing large issues that are abstract and not image-based. The separation of the
practice of design from the designer is a false dichotomy in my estimation since it is the
designer who practices design. Better separations exist along the theory vs. practice
fault line rather than on the practice of design vs. designer as practitioner. Drucker
continues:
Here is an example in a non-theoretical reading you understand that the meaning
of the Stop sign is a command which you, as a socialized human, obey. In a
theoretical reading you would describe the relation between material codes of
production (the shape of the sign, color, placement, size, etc.) and the
production of meaning in a social system (this is a traffic sign, it is official civic
signage, it indicates traffic flow and potential danger, it must be obeyed for legal
reasons, and so on.). Having distinguished these two thingsmaterial codes and
production of meaning you could begin a critical analysis of the variety of
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relations between these two aspects of any sign in different historical or cultural
circumstances. (p. 30)
For students, Drucker believes that theory offers a framework within which the systems
of a culture or of a discipline can be deciphered, transferred, and applied to specific
circumstances. A curriculum of design theory would include linguistics, anthropology,
psychology, sociology, literary theory, art history, and marketingand should be open
to designers and nondesigners alike (p. 122). She believes that this inquiry would place
design in the context of popular culture and would create a sound educational base rather
than the reactive market-driven nature of design education today. This content/theory
debate shadows practice/education in professional education, and the education of
freemen to be useful citizens of ancient Greece.
Fiscal pressures are forcing many departments to consider interdisciplinarity as a
practical as well as a theoretical concept, and the complexities of global commerce may
force design education into a similar consideration. Because design must be responsive to,
and some would say manipulative of, popular culture, it is important to some to ground
the technical and vocational nature of design education in a broader array of studies.
These might include, according to Stafford (1995), anthropology, cognition, semiotics,
sociology, and other visual cultural disciplines such as film. She wonders if that benefit
would be reciprocal and if those majors would benefit from design courses as well?
Whiteley (1995) asks if there should be a major called Design Studies or Design History
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which, like Art History, would not require the making of art or design nor the practice of
design, but would study its history, its influences, and its impact on popular culture.
Houston (1996), writing in the same vein, argues that the liberal vs. professional
debate should be given up for assessing what graduates will need in the new millenium,
and then devising programs to allow them to think critically and accumulate a foundation
education and acquire skills with which they might build careers. So much is written
about the addition of liberal arts to a technical and vocational design education that it is
apparent that in the early 1990s, Rands influence, as previously discussed, had begun to
wane. Graduates, while technically proficient and intuitively trained, did not have a broad
enough reference to respond to the marketplace that did indeed have a broad reference and
demanded one. Margolin (1998) proposes a doctorate in design, composed of research
into design in and as culture (p. 164). His doctorate would include four core topics,
including design practice, design products, design discourse and a reflective metadiscourse
on design as a whole. He would encourage scholars to be interdisciplinary in their
inquiries so that design both informs other disciplines and is informed by them. Blauvelt
(1998) suggests that design students not only be taught to solve problems on a clients
behalf, but that they learn to think critically in problem forming and reflectively about the
nature of design as well. He makes the point that modernist design theory attempted to
remove itself from any contextual or historical framework, so that the questions and
answers were universal. Looking back at modernism, however, Blauvelt points out that
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one can see that the historical context does indeed inform concepts and joins Deweys
similar assertions in this context.
Technology has invaded all disciplines of the academy, but few as profoundly as
the visual disciplines, as the digital tools for production in design disciplines have
streamlined both design and production. In the early 1990s, the introduction of software
programs that manipulated images and organized printed pages took away work that had
been traditionally the domain of the graphic designers. What was once the bread and
butter of the graphic designer in the old cut and paste days was now demystified by
software programs that were universally accessible, such as Adobe PageMaker and
Adobe Photoshop (Blauvelt and Davis, 1997, p. 77). Anyone with some digital savvy
could cut and paste and lay out newsletters and annual reports; the result was functional
if not aesthetically pleasing. Times were lean as graphic designers struggled to reframe
their practices and design educators struggled as well to reconstruct a skill set that
reflected the demands of the marketplace. But what the availability and accessibility of
software programs took away from the domain of graphic design, the Internet returned,
and now graphic designers routinely design the look and the application of websites as
well as corporate identity packages into a coherent, well designed, globally accessible
whole. This is where the need for multicultural competence appears, as mass markets
disappear and global markets replace them. Advertising in print and other media dovetails
with the identity package and website format so that the entire campaign is presented to
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the marketplace in a well-tuned overall strategy. Justice (1998) says that where the
computer was once hailed as a useful tool, it has now become a medium in itself, and
interactivity, with both a skill set and a philosophy, needs to be taught in design curricula.
He adds, what is happening to the time students spend on design? It is being squeezed
(p. 54). We are back to the theory/content debate that is so pervasive in design education.
Multicultural issues and the impact of technology
Bruinsma (1998) suggests that design students today are information agents and
that their trade is visual culture (p. 57). Joining them to create the visual culture are
writers, directors, producers, advertisers, politicians, salespeople, musicians, actors,
supermodels, TV-makers, photographers, film-makers, all of whom are in the business of
producing said visual culture. While the starting point may be different for each of these
producing stakeholders, the end product is the same: additions to, manipulation of
contemporary popular culture a vegetable apiece into the stew of contemporary culture,
as it were. All these stakeholders approach their tasks in a conceptual way that orders
and edits visual information.
Bruinsma says that designers are becoming homo universalis, contemporary
versions of the prototypical Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci (p. 77). Architecture
has, all along, demanded a cross disciplinarian as a practitioner, and it seems that the other
design fields are becoming just as demanding. Perhaps the debate in design education
should be framed along the specifist/generalist fault-line rather than theory/content divide.
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Are designers, then, those who would conceptualize a product and employ those who
Bruinsma would call digital artisans or are designers those who would visualize the
specifics and apply digital skills as well (p. 61)? Students, Bruinsma suggests, should
individually reconstruct their own disciplines, depending on their interests, so that they
can be responsive to the needs of the marketplace. Whereas constructivism has led design
from the early days of the twentieth century and deconstructivism has broken it down
into multiple interpretations, now students must reconstruct their own meanings,
education, and marketplace relevance, and be ready as design practitioners to have their
meanings deconstructed by their clients and markets in turn. Education, according to
Bruinsma, should stress cooperation among students and among disciplines so that the
students can see that their customized program of study is really just a different face on
the same dice (p. 62).
Technology has not only demanded that design as a field respond in several ways
including interdisciplinary theory and applications, interactive and multimedia solutions,
but it has also re-framed the marketplace. Until recently, designers were those who took
anothers idea and gave it form, but that role has changed to include authorship and
editorship as well. Pullman (1998) would also include curricula that would address the
change for designers from two and three dimensions demanded by print, product, and
environment into four dimensions for interactive and multimedia design. What was once
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image- or object-making as the task of design is now the creation of a framework for an
experience, according to Pullman.
Among those who struggle with the issue of cultural competence and
multiculturalism, Bruinsma (1998) makes the point that in our post-modern culture, each
person constructs meaning for him/herself. Mass markets that were framed by the
dominant culture in post World War II economies have begun to retreat in the face of
micro markets of the burgeoning marginalized populations in the 1990s. Further, the
macro markets of global enterprise demand grounding in more than the dominant
American culture. Hence, it would seem that design education is still market-driven,
although those market influences are not only industrial but digital. It is in the digital
domain, in the computer and via the Internet, that the forms of visual culture merge,
according to Bruinsma. He points out that the designer sometimes becomes counselor to
the client (You dont need the fancy website. You need a few good people at the phone
[p. 60]). This suggests that after the Internet/website bandwagon has been thoroughly
ridden, there may be a backlash toward personalized service that begins with human, not
digital, interaction.
Davis (1997) examines design methodologist J.C. Jones hierarchy of design
problems. At the lower levels are components and products such as those that spurred
design as an activity in the nineteenth century during the Industrial Revolution. The
upper levels are those at the systems level that require interrelated activities
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conceptualized and actualized by a group of people who are trained in such
interdisciplinarity. Such interdisciplinarity is the challenge of both design practice and
design education. Such complexity is also at the heart of the multicultural matrix.
Since the marketplace in design began to demand a more pluralistically and
multiculturally facile practitioner, design education is struggling to formulate a strategy
that would inform design students without giving up any of the skills-oriented classes.
The issues are not only framed along the familiar content/theory but also generational
lines, skill set lines, digital lines, and more. Do industrial design students still need to
make clay models or should they focus their designing on 3-D modeling programs?
Should graphic design students cut and paste or prepare projects for print digitally?
Should architectural design students learn to hand draft, or learn directly on AutoCAD?
Should all design students study multicultural websites, critically examine cultural
assumptions, and engage in deliberate dialogue with international students and
practitioners? Finally, which classes should be sacrificed to make way for the future?
Multicultural competence in higher education and in design education
The contemporary practice of design is demanding a more pluralistically and
multiculturally facile practitioner to graduate from educational programs in higher
education. Add the digital domain to design practices with the capacity for multilateral
global access, and the design practitioner, design educator, and design student are all
challenged to become operationally competent in cultures and positionalities not their
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own. Those cultures in which practice demands competency can be framed by any of the
issues of positionality Tisdell (1995) discusses, such as gender, ethnicity, religion,
economic status, educational level, age, dis/ability, or sexual orientation. As discussed in
the Definitions section of Chapter I, multiculturalism asks that the educator and the
practitioner examine ones own positionality as a filter for behavior and practice, and to
become sensitive to that of others as well. In design practices, this means that words,
symbols, and color need to be referenced and checked for every target audience, and that
resources need to be developed that can be accessed for that reference.
In educational terms, multicultural practices are developed meet the needs of the
changing student bodies. Howard-Hamilton, Richard, and Shuford (1998) note admission
figures show that African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos represent about
twenty percent of the total enrollment in higher education, although African American and
Latino males have declined in numbers in the last decade. Thirty percent of new students
are over thirty years of age, indicating the shifting work/educational landscape where
workers re-educate themselves to meet the shifting demands of the workplace. They also
state that statistically, of the new workers entering the labor force by the year 2000, only
fifteen percent will be Eurocentric male, and the rest will be women or ethnic minorities
(pp. 1-2, database pagination).
Adults are more self-directed than students who are in their late-adolescence or
early adulthood, and faculty must be very flexible in methodology to meet stated
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objectives as well as the diverse nature of the student body (Camp, 1994). According to
Howard-Hamilton et al., there should be a holistic approach to student success in a way
that student affairs (which concentrates of the psychosocial development) and the
academic (which concentrates on the intellectual development) would coordinate efforts
so that the entire student experience would be informed by multicultural goals and
strategies. To these authors, one enhances multiculturalism by becoming culturally
competent (p. 1). For Howard-Hamilton et al., the multicultural goal is the fulfillment of
the following three competencies: (a) have an awareness of his or her own assumptions,
values, biases, limitations, and world view; (b) understand the world view of the
culturally different client; (c) develop appropriate intervention strategies and techniques
for working with culturally different clients. (p. 4, database pagination). The authors
suggest that developing a skill set of awareness, understanding, and appreciation in
becoming culturally competent is a difficult process and having guideposts is useful for all
students, faculty, and administrators to aid them in achieving the goal of cultural
competence. Are Howard-Hamilton et al. writing about culture and ethnicity only, or are
they being broad in their definition to include the many issues of positionality? The
reading seems to be narrow, that is confined to culture as ethnicity, and multicultural as
multiethnic rather than relating to the broader issues of positionality in the multicultural
matrix.
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Gingerich, et al. (1999) have developed a diversity competency plan for Case
Western Reserve University which includes six levels of competence that include
knowledge, skills, and values needed in life-long learning about diversity. As discussed
earlier in the definitions section of Chapter I, diversity is often used as an overlap term
for multiculturalism. Diversity itself connotes issues of power and marginalization,
according to Tisdell (1995). At Case Western Reserve University, the faculty is trained
in diversity strategies, and competencies are taught and measured. This has helped their
faculty to focus less on what is being taught and more on what is being learned by both
faculty and students, say the authors, alluding perhaps to hidden agenda. Some questions
arise about the tools to measure faculty adherence to a diversity competency plan; for
instance, if a measuring tool is agreed upon, what kinds of standards are set? Who does
the measuring? What is the impact on the instructor or on the students? How easily does
one slip into political correctness without real reflection and change? Another difficulty
with this approach is that only the first stage, that is sensitivity to and awareness of the
Eurocentric birthright and advantages is taught, and the rest of the framework relies on the
instructors as adults to reflect and grow as they mature. What kind of follow-up is
necessary to reinforce and promote diversity competence? Again, this approach deals
with just one piece of the multicultural matrix.
Bowen, Bok, and Burkhart (1999) note that institutes of higher learning supply
much of the professional and commercial leadership, and it is incumbent on them to not
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only succeed as diverse organizations but to provide a blueprint as to how diverse
organizations can succeed. Educational goals were outlined as those used in selecting
students who study in a way that addresses diversity issues and to contribute graduates
to the mainstream of American culture. Mentoring was suggested as a method of ensuring
success after admission and that mentoring should cross multicultural lines.
Multiculturalism and diversity are issues that should not redress the past but should
speak to the future, according to Bowen et al.. One of the difficulties with this article is
the assumption that students at this university see the mainstream of American society as
a desired destination of their commercial efforts. The authors conclude with their stated
agreement with Mamphela Ramphele, vice chancellor of the university of Cape Town,
South Africa, who said, Everyone deserves opportunity; no one deserves success (p.
12).
Neilsen and Stambaugh (1998) quote hooks (1994) in saying that the practice of
multicultural teaching and learning must use strategies that do not reinscribe either
colonialism or domination (p. 1). Such an approach encourages students to examine
assumptions of differences and sameness, and it encourages students to value diversity.
It also requires that educators reconsider how they teach so that their methods are not
perpetuators of said colonialism or domination. Dialogue is suggested to help students
overcome their own assumptions about other students, their backgrounds, and outlooks.
Personal stories were key to such examination because they brought the points home to
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students and put a face on issues of sexual discrimination or racism, among many other
issues. Many of our students enter the classroom believing that culturally based
differences are problems to be solved or managed rather than assets to be cultivated and
put to good use (Neilsen & Stambaugh (1998, p. 5). Students are encouraged to see the
experiences of others as a resource. Once strategies of inclusion and value are introduced,
however, they must be sustained if they are to be transformative, according to the
authors. Not only should the dialogue be continued, but also teaching strategies should be
examined to reveal cultural hegemony in the classroom and institute new practices that are
both inclusive and instructive.
Curriculum changes to address multiculturalism are developed by Oltjenbruns and
Love (1998). They say that critical to the process of multicultural understanding is the
acknowledgement that ethnocentrism and prejudice are part of the human condition, and
that no one group or another is immune from such attitudes of intolerance. Hence,
multiculturalism must be a mutual exploration, rather than a reaching out of the dominant
culture only. Dialogue is again employed to discuss and reflect on comfort/discomfort
adjacencies of each student. Faculty is encouraged to enter similar dialogue with
colleagues and to develop materials for content-specific classes with a multicultural
perspective. Faculty who participated reported increased sensitivity and more careful
selection of classroom materials, a more critical eye in terms of cultural hegemony, and
they implemented inclusive strategies in their classrooms.
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To further explore the work done in multicultural education, literature in both
adult education and K-12 education will next be explored to inform and ground the
research. In Creating Inclusive Adult Learning Environments: Insights from Multicultural
Education and Feminist Pedagogy, Tisdell (1995) says that to be inclusive of a student
body
would require not only taking into account the ways they are similar, but also
the ways they are different. Inclusivity does mean attempting to provide
curricular course content in a pedagogical style that reflects the gender, racial, and
economic class makeup of the participants themselves as well as attention to the
wider institutional and societal contexts in which they live and work. (pp. 2-3)
She writes of three levels of inclusivity, beginning with (a) constructing a learning
environment in which the diversity of the students is reflected in the learning activity,
(b) moving to the wider context of the institution and society in which students and
faculty study and work, and finally (c) reflects the changing needs of an increasingly
diverse society. She calls for attention to the hidden curriculum, the behaviors that in an
overt but less conscious way support the status quo. She suggests that what is included
or excluded in curricular decisions reflects a political position that supports or challenges
current power relations in the institution and in society.
Tisdell reviews several models of multicultural education to ground inclusivity in
adult education in this monograph, including those of the major contributors to the field
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Sleeter and Grant as well as Banks. Sleeter and Grant, in their 1987 work, An Analysis
of Multicultural Education in the United States, considered some two hundred articles to
examine how different authors viewed multicultural education and found several different
approaches, including the following:
1. Teaching the culturally different in which the goal is to assimilate the students
into the mainstream culture. In this model, knowledge is neutral, and success
is measured by the match of skills to those of the dominant culture. No
attempt is made to question what constitutes knowledge or who decides what
is taught.
2. The human relations approach attempts to aid people of different cultural
groups to live together harmoniously. Communication among individuals
about similar and different experiences is emphasized to eradicate stereotypes.
Individual students learn better, it is felt in this model, if they are understood
and feel safe.
3. Single group studies centers of the experiences of a single group, such as
Native Americans or African Americans, suggesting that the experiences of the
group are similar. Knowledge is defined by how the target group sees it, and
attempts are made to incorporate that way of knowing and body of knowledge
into the curriculum.
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4. The multicultural education approach works to reduce prejudice and work for
equal opportunity and access of all oppressed groups as well as reform the
educational system as well. No one cultural group dominates and an effort is
made to present groups the way members of those groups see them.
Knowledge is seen as political.
5. Education that is both multicultural and social reconstructionist is the fifth
approach. That is, students are encouraged to reflect, change, and act upon
those changes vis--vis other students and social groups. Knowledge is
political, and students can and should examine the way knowledge is defined,
framed, and broadcast, and not only challenge the status quo, but develop
alternatives.
No attempts are made to discuss the risks and/or benefits of each or any approaches, but
it is important, according to Tisdell, for educators to pay attention to the political climate
in the educational institution before initiating curricular changes.
Tisdell reviews Banks 1993 Approaches to Multicultural Curriculum Reform,
and reveals what Banks sees as the levels of inclusion of multicultural material in the
classroom, particularly around race and ethnicity. He has four approaches to
multicultural education.
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1. The first is the contributions approach which relies on heroes and artifacts of a
particular culture. The criteria used to identify heroes and artifacts are those
of the dominant culture (and knowledge is therefore inherently political).
2. The additive approach is to add a unit that deals with one or more group that
is marginalized. For instance, one might include the movie or the book Born
on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic (1990), and then discuss disability, the
Vietnam war, current issues about landmines and those who continue to be
disabled by that war, acts of patriotism, etc. Banks makes the point that the
additive approach usually results in exploring the material from the
perspective of the dominant culture (and is therefore inherently political),
although it is seen as an important stepping stone to transformation.
3. The transformative approach tries to offer opportunities for students to
challenge their assumptions about various curricular positions and to learn to
view the concept from several points of view. Knowledge in this approach is
not neutral but inherently political.
4. The fourth is the social action approach, which builds on personal
transformation as mentioned above, and asks for action to be implemented.
Skills necessary for social change are taught so students can be active in the
democratic process.
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The difference in the Sleeter and Grant and the Banks synthesis of multicultural
education lies in whether they are learner centered in the Banks models or teacher centered
in Sleeter and Grant. The typologies of multicultural education, described by Sleeter and
Grant, and by James Banks, are attempts to describe differences in educational
approaches, and those approaches are not simply differentiated by the actions of teachers
but by the attention teachers pay to their own and others positions in the world. Tisdell
points out that Banks is more forthright in the examination of the epistemological
grounding of the approaches and in the assumptions which underlie the approaches.
Although Banks and Sleeter and Grant have focussed on K-12 education, Tisdell suggests
that they can be extrapolated and applied to adult education as well. There seem to be
issues that would be useful for post-secondary design education as well, and, indeed, the
Findings (Chapter Four) of this study indicate that design educators employ three
multicultural approaches, although slightly differently than those models above.
There is more work from K-12 literature that informs post-secondary
multicultural strategies. Delpit (1995) warns against trying to fit individual children into a
group mold with a preconceived set of behaviors. Knowledge about culture is but one
tool that educators may make use of when devising solutions for a schools difficulty in
educating diverse children (p. 167). However, the clash between the home culture and
the school culture are certainly indicators of classroom difficulties, especially if the
classroom is designed around another, and therefore exclusive, set of behaviors. This is
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particularly useful for design education, given that the student populations have become
pluralistic, and some students are from families who are new to higher education, some
students have learning styles that may not be conducive to traditional methods of higher
education, and some are from populations that are in the minority at design schools.
According to Delpit, knowing something about the cultures that inform the students helps
teachers devise methodology that plays on the strengths of those cultures, keeping in
mind that ethnicity as culture is but one of the cells in a multicultural matrix. Teachers
should expect excellence based on the strengths the students bring to the classroom, as
well as the humility to learn from the students, she says. While this book focuses on K-
12 education and especially elementary education, it also points out challenges that have
concurrence in higher education, professional education, and design education.
Specific multicultural practices are discussed in two books, one by Garcia (1994)
and another edited by Enloe and Simon (1993). Though K-12 oriented, they, too, offer
specific exercises that foster an appreciation of classroom diversity. Garcia focuses on
strategies to become a responsive teacher, to enable critical thinking in the form of
examination of various points of view, of the source and veracity of printed information,
and to recognize the legitimacy of many points of view. He addresses three issues
specifically that arise from promoting diversity in the classroom:
1. There are those who fear that promoting diversity will divide the community,
when in fact, communities are rarely monoliths, and fault lines lie along many
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polarities, including urban/rural, displaced/established, newly
immigrated/assimilated/tribal, among many others. Diversity, in fact,
according to the author, unites the community.
2. If diversity oriented educational methodology is introduced, then wrongs will
be righted, some feel. Many concepts of diversity can be found, many
intended and unintended ramifications of diversity training will result, and
practice must be employed so that good intentions, in fact, have impact.
3. The emphasis on diversity does not come without a price. When assumptions
are challenged, the status quo is upset, and instigators are suspect.
While Garcias scholarly book focuses in immigrant populations, voluntary and
involuntary, and on the K-12 school system that struggles to provide equity in education,
his points are an excellent grounding for diversity issues at the post-secondary level,
keeping in mind that diversity is but one of the chambers in the multicultural matrix.
Tisdell reviews many other educational frameworks, including feminism and
Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986), Womens Ways of Knowing. Tisdell
mentions that feminist pedagogy centers on recurring themes, including how knowledge is
constructed, voice and authority, and methods of dealing with authority. She says that
while the five types of knowing are identified, what is important is in Belenky et al. is
that learning environments be supportive of both objective and subjective ways of
perceiving information, and that critical thinking can be fostered in such an atmosphere.
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As many educators would concur, and indeed as some of the participants agreed in the
study that follows in Chapter IV, the whole job is try to get them to be more critical
thinkers and to be more inclusive and more expansive in their thinking (p. 34). Tisdell
concludes her monograph by stating that all education is political (p. 88). All education
is constructed from someones or some groups perspective, and critically examined, the
veil of presumed neutrality is lifted, which can be unsettling for the student, faculty,
and institution. Creating an inclusive learning environment is difficult, says Tisdell. It
does seem that educators interest[ed] in doing so might want to give themselves
permission to try new things and to make mistakes along the way (p. 89).
Pagenhart (1994) suggests that people tend to organize around their issue of first
emergency the facet of their identity that they feel plunges them most deeply into social
crisis (p. 181). She continues that the issue of first emergency shifts, and thus in a
multicultural context, one may identify most with any one of the issues in the
multicultural matrix (ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, economic status,
educational level, religion, or dis/ability) under different circumstances and at different
times. Hence, scanning ones position in the matrix needs to become constant, and the
acknowledgement of the legitimacy of others matrices and shifting issues of first
emergency, and in fact, how to be responsive to a multicultural matrix becomes a
challenge for an educator.
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A particularly useful book on culturally responsive teaching at the post secondary
level is by Wlodkowski and Ginsberg (1995). The authors point out the discomfort in
acknowledging even innocent complicity with institutions and behaviors (p. xiii) that
are biased and inherent systemic benefits derived by instructors of the dominant culture,
and the uncertainty that instructors feel in taking even the most tentative steps toward
equity and inclusivity. They point out the difficulties of maintaining a classroom that is
culturally sensitive if it is normed on Western European behaviors and belief systems, and
offer alternatives to concepts long held dear by the dominant culture, such as freedom,
humanitarian mores, efficiency and practicality, among others. The authors suggest that
by clarifying an instructors own cultural values, then s/he can understand how
profoundly and subtly these values shape behaviors within and out of the classroom.
The challenge is, according to the authors, to create learning experiences that allow the
integrity of every learner to be sustained while each person attains relevant educational
success and mobility (p. 18). They suggest that triggers, the words or phrases that may
reveal hidden agenda or be code words for repeated cultural discrimination, be targeted and
acknowledged by any member of a class, so that they can be examined later when the
response has been tempered by some time. They suggest that problem-solving goals are a
positive way to establish ownership of the learning process and are a typical part of
design related classrooms. With problem-solving goals, the potential answers are not
definite or known beforehand (p. 126). This has particular application to design
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education since design process looks for the best of many possible answers,
acknowledging beforehand that there is no single good solution to a design problem. It
also lends itself to open-ended design problems and to the framing of design problems in a
way that builds upon engaging each students positionality and allows them choices of
social issues as well as visual/spatial issues.
Teachers can enhance meaning making by acknowledging four qualities, assert
Wlodkowski and Ginsberg. The first of these is power awareness, which is understanding
that societies are constructed again and again by power groups, as well as understanding
who those groups are composed of and what those groups currently espouse. The
second quality is critical literacy, which is analyzing subsurface traditions and cliches, as
well as understanding their implementation in social constructs, and applying that
meaning to ones own context. The third is desocialization, which is challenging
prejudicial myths of mass culture that are internalized and then manifest in the dominant
culture. Self-education, the fourth quality, involves developing a construct through which
institutions are examined for equity and by which social change can be initiated (p. 164).
These qualities are transformative, according to the authors, and offer a great deal of
deeper learning as teacher and learner move toward a common goal of an equitable society.
An interesting outcome of cultural transformation is a changing identity. The
authors suggest that identity is a powerful influence on our motivation (p. 302), and as
we reflect and change, we also must claim our new identity. Are educators as resistant to
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change as the authors suggest? Does becoming a culturally responsive mean that
instructors have to give up their status and power in the classroom? The authors
advocate in favor of faculty development programs that not only examine cultural
assumptions but that develop action plans to implement changes to classroom behaviors.
They say that key to this is development of the program by faculty itself. They do not
deal with the next level of the impacted structure, that of the administration of the
institution. If faculty takes charge of creating structure in their development programs, do
they not challenge the power structure of the administration themselves? Isnt it
irresponsible to encourage teachers to be change agents in their own institutions when to
do so can be personally and professionally very risky?
Wlodkowski and Ginsberg suggest that it is ineffective to try to teach across
cultures without considering human motivation. They site the competitive system in
higher education that grades and ranks students for eligibility to privileged occupations
and educational opportunities (p. 310). In doing so, higher education conveys the
dominant cultural beliefs of a society. Multiculturalism, they suggest, obviates such a
system, acknowledging that all knowledge should be shared and must be constructed from
multiple perspectives. The authors list eight criteria that are primary to promoting
inherent motivations to learn. These eight motivators are as follows (and are represented
in italics, according to the authors intent):
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When people feel respected and connected in the learning setting, when people
have a voice in self-determining learning they find relevant, and when people
engage in challenging and authentic experiences that enhance their effectiveness in
what they value, people learn. (p. 311)
The authors complete their book with several resource pages with exercises and plans that
enhance a teachers support of culturally responsive teaching, including small group work,
question formulating periods, pair work, and group presentations.
Because professional and design education prepares students for a world of work,
another book that deals with diversity in the workplace is worthy of mention. Simons,
Vasquez, and Harris (1993) focus on managerial functions and how to enable the best
from a diverse workforce. They stress acculturation over assimilation. Acculturation is
the facility of living in two worlds (some call this bi-culturality), in this case, the world of
work and the world at home. To assimilate, one would have to abandon the framework
that defines one outside of work. While most choose acculturation, it still requires
comfort with some dissonance, and with some perceived disconnect within the home
community, although acculturation also means that one has to learn enough to survive and
to thrive in the new community. The world of work has changed a great deal in the late
twentieth century, including the pluralistic and diverse population of workers, the global
marketplace, periodic reeducation as a norm, higher expectations of employees, and a
renewed social agenda.
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Managing culture is a pervasive theme in the book by Simons et al. (1993).
Culture is a filtering framework that grounds our behaviors, is ethnocentric, and does not
normally equip for living in a polycentric world full of relativities (p. 19). The authors
mention a new eighty/twenty rule that states that when there are breakdowns in
management, eighty percent is systemic and twenty percent is personal. Therefore, if a
certain population does not succeed, a good, hard look at the system is in order. This
certainly can be applied to educational systems as well with many layers of potential
application, including faculty development and retention, student services and housing,
student academic success and support, among others. Simons et al. assert that if gender
issues are not treated as cultural issues and addressed first, then all other cultural issues
remain on a superficial level. Their use of diversity alludes to several chambers of the
multicultural matrix, including ethnicity and gender, and to navigating power as an issue in
the workplace. Their thinking is large and empowering except in the advice in the chapter
on gender, gender choices and the workplace. There, it is narrower (i.e., suggestions that
one manage ones fears and those of others -- how? --strategies?). Their cultural models in
the Appendix A are particularly helpful, although lengthy and poorly laid out. They
conclude:
Now, more than ever, we need women and men who can listen carefully to the
world around them, envision something better, influence, mentor, and empower
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others, and take steps themselves to carry out their hopes and dreams in flexible
and inventive ways. (p. 205)
Two further areas of exploration were small but useful. One is a cultural
anthropologist who has taught at the university level and now writes for the Seattle
Times, among others, and through a series of articles explores what she calls cultural
intelligence. She defines this as the ability to use your reasoning and observation skills
to understand cultural beliefs and behavior (July 11, 1999), and further, to observe,
learn and understand our own cultural bias as well as the behavior and bias of others
(July 18, 1999). She says that cultural relativism does not mean an absence of standards,
just that there is room for a wide range of styles among cultures that have similar value,
and that discussion and debate is necessary to bring bias into the open and examine it. I
would suggest that cultural intelligence be expanded to multicultural intelligence to take
into account all of the chambers of the multicultural matrix.
Another who writes about cultural relativism is Rosado (1994), writing for a
website called Web of Culture, who suggests that cultural relativism declares that
values are relative to the cultural ambiance out of which they arise (p. 1 database
pagination). He calls cultural relativism a new way of seeing (p. 7) that is necessary for
the global and multicultural societies to exist in a contemporary world so that people can
transcend their own cultures and identify with all of humankind as is required today. He
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feels that a multicultural education is the stepping stone to such global human
compassion.
Simons again writes with a partner, Sheridan, in another venue, this time in an
article from The Web of Culture website. In it, the authors examine symbols, color, and
other visuals (including links) used on the web from a cultural perspective. Choices made
for websites can indicate who is in power in the country of origin, and who is
disenfranchised. Culturally responsible companies monitor target markets for
information so that their websites which are meant to attract business are not, in effect,
subverting their own message with unintended visual and verbal messages. Other work
done in this area includes an examination of cross-cultural symbolic color (Vanka, 1998)
and cultural models of color by Kwon (1998). Suggestions for implementation of these
models lie in Chapter V: Discussion and in Appendix III.
How do we as design educators respond to the challenges of multicultural
intelligence and to the multicultural student bodies? After all, our students are those who
will design websites, market themselves via the web, shop for information and materials
on the web, discuss their world with others on the web, and whose clients will be
multinational companies. Stinespring and Kennedy (1995) offer a blueprint for Meeting
the need for multiculturalism in the art classroom. After much dissembling about the
perils of modernism and postmodernism and vague recommendations from a conference
on discipline-based art education (DBAE) in 1992, they do offer some concrete and useful
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multicultural information about the art classroom. First, they mention that as a group,
people of color will no longer be the minority by the year 2025. They refer to Population
Reference Bureau studies from the period 1981 to 1988, when they say that, in the
future, because of lower graduation rates of minority teachers, the classroom teacher with
a so-called minority student population will probably be Eurocentric. That teacher needs
to know how to connect in an artistic and creative way with the traditions that inform
his/her student body. The authors employed the heroes and artifacts method of inclusive
material, using the life of African American artist Charles White as way to frame an
artistic unit. Only four years have passed since this was written, but its tone is so far
behind the curve in multicultural education not only in content but also its limited scope.
The effort seems very teacher oriented, a focus on what is taught, rather on what was
learned, or how the learner could frame the artistic lesson. Further, their approach to
multiculturalism is specifically ethnically oriented, based on culture only rather than any
other issues in the vast multicultural matrix.
Another article on multicultural art education focused on a university textile
program in North Dakota, and a target population of Native Americans. The students
were from five reservations and the faculty was from the dominant Eurocentric culture.
The question asked was appropriate: How can we learn from each other? The objective
was to establish a connection among tribal colleges on the reservations with North Dakota
State Universitys Department of Apparel, Textiles, and Interior Design. Collaborative
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programs were developed and partnerships were forged for production of textiles and the
marketing of them. Sensitivity to history and culture, bases for exchange of information,
cross-cultural understanding and trust were forged, according to this study. Again, some
of the positionality issues in the multicultural matrix were addressed, and some were not.
In a 1996 collaboration between the New Museum of Contemporary Art and
editors Cahan and Kocur, a book called Contemporary Art and Multicultural Education
was produced for high school art programs. The implications are of use in post-
secondary design education as well. Several people supplied articles to this wide-ranging
book, and many authors contributed visual images and life stories in an extremely useful
way. Adelaide Sanford, a black educator and professor at Baruch College of the City
University of New York, offered what we, as educators, should be focused on:
We should be educating young people as whole human beings who value
themselves, their world and other people, and who approach that world and its
people with the desire to understand them. The end result of education should be
a person who values the environment and looks at the pieces of the world not as
separate, but as being irrevocably intertwined and interdependent. We dont talk
about education like that, and therefore we are not getting there at all. (p. 5)
Other interviews included in this book are on media education, English as a second
language in art, and student-centered learning practices. Each interview has insights useful
to multicultural design education. Mention is made of enhancing critical visual thinking in
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image analysis and its link to popular culture, encouraging students to open their minds to
possibilities to reconstruct meaning that is useful in and out of the classroom. Another
interviewer reminds us that diversity is a strength, that there are multiple aesthetics, and
that each is enriching and enabling of a wider worldview. The artists included are shown
in portrait, in life story both in English and Spanish, and visually. Together they make a
powerful message that there are multiple viable perspectives, each worthy of
examination, each enriching. Finally, forty-three classroom exercises for high school and
beyond are included which deal with art as a multicultural, diverse, and pluralistic activity
that deals with contemporary issues are included with objectives and learning activities.
The categories include American identity, recasting the family, the war in Vietnam, AIDS
and its representation, and art in the public realm. Finally, the appendices list arts
organizations and resources. This is the most thorough, useful book Ive seen that
addresses many of the issues in the complex multicultural matrix unflinchingly, and is of
interest to students and faculty alike. While the activities are artistic in nature (the
objective is the personal exploration of the artist) and not design oriented, much of use
can be extrapolated for post-secondary design education.
Because the population for whom we design has changed in the last forty years
from a mass market based on a Eurocentric male model to a globally pluralistic one, the
broader framework for design education makes sense. What if that broader framework
(anthropology, sociology, psychology, etc.), however, has been framed on the same
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Eurocentric male model? Where once design classrooms were filled with eager young men
of European descent, now the students in those classrooms represent the citizens of the
world. Not only are design students not just American, they are not just male, nor
heterosexual, nor able-bodied, nor Christian, nor any number of positionalities that ground
each individual (Tisdell, 1995). Further, the marketplace, especially in the digital domain
(and there is no practice, nor any form of design, that is untouched by this phenomenon),
demands that the design practices understand both global and micro markets. How do we
serve and educate the constituency of the new millenium?
As quoted earlier in this study, Blauvelt and Davis (1997) suggest that educators
give agency and voice to students experiences and positionalities. They also
acknowledge that many offices and practices for which students are being trained do not
reflect the plurality of contemporary society, and are in fact, very Eurocentric. As the
interconnectedness of contemporary society and contemporary clients penetrates design
practices, this Eurocentricity is bound to change if practices are to remain viable.
Buchanan (1998) suggests that examining the philosophy of culture and its
relationship to the individual will reveal a new perspective. If culture is an ordering
activity that is dynamic in ebb and flow, then culture can be a framework for responsible
discussion and collaboration on contemporary issues, so that all partners in the discussion
recognize that there is some merit in an opponents arguments. Culture, he suggests, is
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what we do collectively and deliberately. Rather than giving in to the power of the
tribes, (p. 19) or to an oppressive competitive ideological order, the new philosophy of
culture offers a suitable ground for defending the individual. Universality in the new
philosophy of culture is not achieved through consensus in general ideology. Rather,
universality is an expression of individuality placed in its context (p. 19 italics from
Buchanan). Post-modernism lives.
Design thinking, according to Buchanan, allows for larger thinking than the
particulars, but also directs attention towards productive action. Further, he writes
Design is the most vivid domain for this cultural activity in the contemporary world
because it deals with concrete and objective results whose consequences affect us all (p.
20).
The marketplace has demanded of design practices what civil rights legislation and
Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions enforcement had failed to do. The global
marketplace demanded that if Coke was to be sold to New Guinea, for instance, that a
designer must have access to someone who knew or information that would frame insights
into that microculture. Designers from marginalized populations were suddenly sought
out rather than excluded in design practices so that targeted populations could be
manipulated with insider language and reference imagery. In 1994, when the Internet was
just beginning to burgeon and demand multicultural and pluralistic familiarity, Poynor
(1994) wrote:
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talk of tribes raises a larger dilemma and it is here, perhaps that graphic designs
thorniest problem lies. For despite regular handwringing and a torrent of
platitudes, the tribes themselves are still hardly represented at all at the heart of
the successful design community. This is true of the group now assuming the
mantle of influence and leadership as it was of their predecessors. The new
leaders are in the main white, middle-class alumni of a small group of highly
visible, vigorously self-promoting graduate schools. They are diverse, but
nowhere near as diverse as American society. Only the increasing proportion of
women in their ranks suggests anything is really changing as the baton is passed,
and some would dispute even this. (p. 67)
Riss (1994), in an article titled Opportunity knocksbut for whom? reviews
the career of New York architect Jack Travis, who comments on the lack of ethnic
diversity in architecture and interior design. The Organization of Black Designers (OBD)
estimates that two percent of interior designers are African-American, and until they as a
group feel comfortable expressing their own ethnicity, there will not be as steady an
increase in their numbers as there will be in the profession itself. Until Jack Travis had
Spike Lee as a client, all his clients were of other ethnicities. Harris (1998), an African
American designer and one who designed the Census Bureaus informational packets,
discusses her students at the university level in graphic design. She suggests that while
graphic design progresses by building upon design traditions, the African American
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student does not feel a connection with the prevailing traditions of the dominant culture.
She says that self-confidence may be the single most important influence in the lives of
successful African Americans (p. 125). She sites black musicians who feel secure
because they are working within and building upon known and accepted traditions. She
asks if there is a black tradition, by which she does not mean subject matter or imagery,
but the styling and expressions common to people of African descent (p. 126). Design
history has focused on the history of European influences or the current cultural fusion in
her opinion. She says a black design aesthetic would draw from other arts such as jazz,
hip-hop, and other forms that use improvisation, polyrhythms, call and response, etc.
Harris finishes the article with some notes about African influences on Western culture,
including the cubists such as Leger, Bracque, and Picasso, as well as the birth of jazz and
the Harlem Renaissance. She feels that cultural rebellion fosters innovative black design,
such as the renewal of black cultural nationalism in the 1970s and the tribal symbolism of
street artists in the 1980s. She finishes by mentioning the black media and the fostering
of black performers, designers and artists for the African American micromarket, and
suggests that black designers turn to supporting their own culture as that is where the
necessary pressure of innovation will lie for them.
Assumptions about the role of the designer and the reframing of those
assumptions are key to much of the debate in design education, and as with other facets
of design, as the underlying assumptions about design and designers change, so must
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design education change. Drucker (1998), in her article Talking Theory/Teaching
Practice, says that whats at stake isnt so much the look or form of design practice, but
the life and consciousness of the designer (p. 85). She says that the debate about theory
vs. practice should be reframed into asking in whose interest and to what ends (85)?
To her, that is the critical baseline question. She asks some more interesting questions:
Do we teach theory-speak (p. 80) so that we can participate in the academic power
structure and forge careers in the educational pantheon? Do we abandon the traditional
skills of visual, physical, verbal, and graphic images? Do we apply the theoretical base
and open-ended inquiry to life-skills? In the money-power matrix, where does the
responsibility for shaping the public imagination fall? How should the resources of a
small planet be responsibly used in a manner that is equitable and self-sustaining rather
than profitable to the few? How can we as designers and as design educators, then,
practice responsibly rather than hegemonically? Not only do we have to struggle with the
actual and transparent curriculum, but the hidden one as well. Dutton (1987), among
others (Groat & Ahrentzen, 1996, 1997), writes about the hidden curriculum in
architectural education and attempts to use a critical pedagogy to challenge the
assumptions of students in his design studio classes. Further, he attempts to model
behaviors and encourages those behaviors in the everyday classroom that ground this
challenge to accepted modes of power and hegemony.
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Another cell in the complex matrix of multiculturalism is gender. In a recent
Architecture magazine, the editor, Kroloff, addressed the response to their May 1999
issue which featured young architects. On the cover was a Eurocentric woman in her
thirties who was a partner in a practice as well as a parent, the implication being that a
woman could be an effective partner in both professional and personal life. There were
comments in letters to the editor about her beauty and her ethnicity as placing her in a
prime position for a cover-girl, but it was a letter from a practice in Pennsylvania in which
the writer thanked the editor for the excruciatingly funny article to which the editor
responded. This individual was from a firm that included two women in its nineteen
partners after seventy-nine years in practice. Those two women were at the bottom of
the hierarchy of the practice, which made it clear to the editor (a Eurocentric male as well)
that practitioners in the design fields still do not generally view women as capable equal
partners in a professional practice. Kroloff (1999) writes, A womans face on our cover
(attractive or otherwise) may be noteworthy, but it shouldnt elicit the troglodytic roar
we heard. The fact that it did reflects poorly on this profession and society at large (p.
11).
Morley (1999) discusses the feminist perspectives in Surviving the Academy.
There is considerable discussion about how the affective domain is underappreciated in
faculty, the managerialism of appraisal that underscores the masculine culture that
focuses on quantifiable outputs (p. 2), and the occupation by women at the lower levels
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of educational hierarchies. Women faculty are often overburdened with not only affective
management of students but more masculine models as well, and women of color must
also manage and mentor students of color in addition to their other already demanding
roles.
Cullen (1998) suggests that the biggest challenge to design today is
internationalism, which she defines as an understanding of different cultures and how to
work with others. In the same vein, McMahon and White (1998) write of a cultural
exchange of postcards that became a study of how other cultures make meaning from
images. Their students became much more aware of the weightiness of images and their
cultural implications. Stairs (1997) suggests that design can become an instrument of
intercultural understanding rather than intercultural manipulation and bland metacultural
meaning formulation. This cultural understanding is what Howard-Hamilton et al. (1998)
would call cultural competence.
Conclusion
Much of the literature discussed in this section is conceptual in nature and
represents a public dialogue on the issues. Some small pieces, such as McMahon and
Whites (1998) post-card study and the 1995 Print survey, as reported by Lewis (1995),
are the beginnings of scholarly inquiry into the nature of the multicultural matrix and its
application to design education. Much needs to be done, but the first steps, the
discussion, have been undertaken.
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All of the issues of contemporary culture inhabit the design practice and the
design classroom, and confound design students and design educators as well. The
challenges for design education are many, not only in theory and content, but also in
terms of the triumvirate of the emerging practice/non-traditional practitioners/traditional
practitioners, as well as the contemporary students/the more tradition-bound educators
(teaching how and what they were taught)/traditional educational system, all struggling to
remain relevant. The global demands of the marketplace and those of the emerging
pluralistic micromarkets may have done for design practices and for design education
what proponents of equality and diversity have long been fighting for equity and access
for all the populations in the multicultural matrix.
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CHAPTER III: A METHODOLOGY
Globalism has changed how we teach design, to whom we teach design, and the
practices in which design students will eventually practice their design skills. Where the
choices of a few once dictated what and how design would be framed for mass markets,
now the choices of many must be addressed in multinational markets and in
micromarkets, and in education and in practice. Equity and access was mandated with
civil rights legislation in 1964 and later, and although it was the law, it was slow to
materialize in many educational forums as well as in professional practice. Now,
however, when the marketplace demands multicultural and micromarket savvy, designers
from marginalized populations as well as international populations are sought for their
understanding of particular newly wealthy populations. Roth writes (1999),
revolutionary changes in modern society brought about by new communication media,
new technologies, new products, new markets, and new methods and production present
challenges for all fields of design practice (p. 20). How can design education rise to the
challenge of such market and practice pressures in order to devise a methodology that
prepares students for todays professional design practice? To investigate this question
and others, therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify the strategies of experienced
post-secondary design educators who address the multicultural character of their student
bodies in their design classrooms, and as well as their strategies for preparing students
for the multicultural and global nature of contemporary design practices.
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In this chapter, both the practical methods of information gathering as well as the
theoretical constructs under which the study will be conducted will be examined.
Theoretical Framework
More than one writer has tried to come to grips with alternatives to quantitative
research with its yearnings for certainty, objectivity, researcher neutrality, replication,
and absolute numbers. Those studies that involve the complexities of human behaviors
such as the social sciences, including both design and education, have difficulty fitting the
mercurial responses of human beings into a set construct. Thus, as Strickler (1999)
writes, quoting Brinberg and McGrath (1985), that research in the late twentieth century
is more about reducing uncertainty about subjects or phenomena than about the search
for absolute truth (p. 29).
Roth (1999), discussing research paradigms, bases her remarks on Hamiltons
work in the Handbook of Qualitative Research (1994), who suggests that qualitative
research is derived from Immanuel Kant, an eighteenth century philosopher, who
challenged Descartes theories on research from the previous century. Kant, says
Hamilton, focused on the difference between theoretical and practical knowledge, and on
the difficulty of quantifying human judgments and actions. Roth (1999) outlines three
categories of inquiry including (a) concrete/specific which deals with design choices and
their ramifications; (b) conceptual which deals with constructs of knowing and design
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behaviors derived from those constructs; and (c) theoretical/philosophical which looks at
larger questions of access and interactivity at the macro level in design.
For Merriam (1998), the focus of research is the nature of a phenomenon that is
constructivist in philosophy. Constructivism, mentioned by both Roth (1999) and
Merriam, suggests that beliefs are reconstructed as the perception of reality changes, and
hence are individualistic and evolutionary in nature. Roth offers further philosophy: she
calls one of these postposivitist which states that research can never fully expose a
phenomena as the researcher always brings limitations to the research. Another
philosophy Roth mentioned is postmodernism that attempts to reinterpret perspectives
(ethnic, feminist, environmentalist, etc.) while remaining aware of the inevitable bias of
the observer and the multifaceted nature of any object of study (p. 23).
Merriam writes that there are four main characteristics of qualitative research, no
matter what the worldview or philosophical approach of the researcher is. These are
based on the understanding of how the interaction of the parts of a phenomenon form the
whole of the phenomena. The characteristics are: (a) researchers are either insiders or
outsiders, (b) and are the primary data collectors who (c) work in the field, (d) employing
an inductive research strategy. The result is deeply descriptive and global in approach
(Merriam, 1998, p. 6-8). Merriam and Roth use the terms richly descriptive (Merriam,
p. 8) and securing rich descriptions (Roth, 1999, p. 23). Hence, this study is
descriptive in nature as well, of the participants, of the settings, of the uses of
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multiculturalism in the classroom and the instructors approaches to multiculturalism, of
the tactics employed and the interpretations of the results of those tactics. Qualitative
research employs multiple methods, many of which rely on the complex context in which
events take place and a more intimate or engaged involvement with the
subject/participant (Roth, 1999, 23).
According to these models, I am an insider, a design instructor, since I am inquiring
of my colleagues how they approach a subject of common interest. My research is
concrete/specific because it deals with choices and the ramifications of those choices as in
the Roth models.
One of the benefits of qualitative research is that it is flexible enough to allow for
the unexpected result. Thus, where I assumed I would find tactics, micro-strategies, and
techniques for introducing multiculturalism into post-secondary classrooms, instead, I
found macro-strategies or approaches to multiculturalism in the classroom -- a larger
panorama rather than a close-up.
Research Design
While ethnographic research originally required emersion in the culture for a year
or more, variations on this base model have appeared in more recent decades.
Conceptually, this emersion was supposed to result in observed behaviors and
interactions. The participant was to remain objective even as s/he participated in the
culture. This oxymoronic posture lead to other variations that acknowledged not only the
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participation, and therefore the alteration of the behaviors, but the inability of a person of
another culture to appropriately interpret the behaviors. What does remain in qualitative
research is that the researcher is the primary data collector. The bias of the single data
collector was once problematic, but more recently the acknowledgement of that bias
seems to have taken the onus from this difficulty.
This is a descriptive qualitative research study within a constructivist theoretical
framework. It uses a semi-structured interviewing strategy that targets a group of
experienced post-secondary design educators, all of whom self-identified as using
multicultural methodology or content in their classes. The data is comprised of carefully
transcribed interviews, as well as any artifacts that are deemed appropriate for support
material, and these data have been analyzed for coding and commonality of theme as the
interviews progressed. The validity of the analysis was a thorough and systematic
methodology, including an interrators analysis, with constant comparative analysis of
material and synthesis of findings. The study was limited by time constraints as well as
by the bias of the researcher.
Identifying and Soliciting Participants
The first criterion for this study was to identify experienced educators. An
inquiry was distributed with permission to the over two hundred instructors at the
institution where I teach, asking if any knew of instructors at other institutions who used
any form of multicultural instruction in content or methodology. I received three
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responses from instructors who had used such techniques at other institutions. I eagerly
made appointments with them and asked for referrals to anyone else they knew about
who might be interested in participating in this study. The first identification method
was self-selection by participants. One of these participants recommended another from
her previous faculty appointment, and I called him for a phone interview.
I sent more than forty e-mails to instructors from Internet university websites
whose descriptions included some international work. I received three replies, one of
which was a referral to a professor at another university. Additionally, I sent forty-four
inquiries via the postal service to instructors at well known design schools (Rhode Island
School of Design, Otis College of Art and Design, Parsons, Art Center College of Design,
Cornish College of the Arts, Virginia Technical Institute) whose career descriptors
indicated there may be an interest in multiculturalism in design education. Each
solicitation stated the reason for the inquiry and the list of questions, offering other
options for reply, such as faxed replies, emailed replies, or a phone interview. I received
no replies to this solicitation. An example of this solicitation is in Appendix II-B.
Purposeful Sample
My targets for research were experienced design educators in post-secondary
institutions, two- and four-year programs, at the graduate level, and in adult education,
who use either a multicultural approach in their pedagogical methodology or who use
multicultural materials in their classes. I was explicit in the nature of the broad definition
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of multicultural, and included issues of positionality as coined by Tisdell (1995), including
ethnicity, religion, age, dis/ability, economic class, educational status, gender, and sexual
orientation. Experienced educators were those with at least two years of instructional
experience at the post-secondary level or above. The sample population was involved in
design education as instructors, and as it happened, in practices of design as professional
practitioners.
As previously mentioned, subjects proved to be difficult to find. All types of
inquiries appear in the Addendum II. There could be many contributing factors to this
difficulty in finding subjects to participate in the study, including the design of the study,
unfamiliarity with the terms employed, inquiries from an unknown source, reluctance to
examine ones own teaching and professional practice, the timing of the solicitations near
the years end, among many other possible factors.
Finally, six design educators at the post-secondary level were selected as
participants. All initials of the participants have been changed to protect their identities.
HL: a female designer and instructor with a Masters level education in interior
architecture, teaching in a nine-quarter interior design program at a technically oriented
college in the Northwest. She previously taught at a major Midwest design school at the
graduate level. She has a private practice in interior architecture and is an award-winning
designer of interior spaces and furniture.
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FD: a male designer and design educator at a major Midwest design school with a
Masters level education in architecture. He teaches at the undergraduate and graduate
levels in interior architecture. He maintains a private practice in architecture.
JZ: a female graphic designer, a design and new media educator with a bachelors
level education in graphic design. She teaches at a Northwest design college in an eight-
quarter technically oriented graphic design program. She maintains a private practice in
graphic design.
BC: a male architect and design educator with a Masters in Architecture. He
teaches at a Northwest design college in a nine-quarter interior design program. He
maintains a private practice in architecture.
OT: a female educator who is currently an administrator at a Northwest
technically oriented design college. She has a masters level education and formerly taught
furniture refinishing and reconstruction in a program for adults.
MP: a female architect and architecture educator with a doctoral level education.
She teaches architecture at the graduate level for a Midwest university and maintains a
private practice.
From time to time, the interviewer is referred to by initials: EH.
The participants all had bachelors degrees, and all but one had a graduate degree.
All had taught at the post-secondary level or beyond for two years or more. All had
participated in some form of design-related practice as well as a teaching practice, and
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self-identified as using methodology that was multicultural in some way. All were of
European descent, although four of the six participants self-identified as having some
positionalities that were not of the dominant culture (gender, age, sexual orientation,
religion, and disability). They represented the following design fields: one participant
taught and practiced in graphic design and new media design; three participants taught in
interior design and of those three, one was an interior architect and two were architects;
one participant taught and researched in architecture; and one taught and practiced in
furniture design.
Data Collection
Qualitative studies generally use three methods of collecting data: interviews,
collection of artifacts, and observations. Because of the data that emerged from the
participant interviews, the observation segment of the study proved to be unfeasible.
Some of the multicultural strategies had been employed at previous teaching institutions
in distant cities, some in classes that were no longer taught, and some arose situationally
in a way that could not be replicated. Hence, I am employing two of those methods:
interviews and examination of artifacts. To strengthen the interview segment, then, an
interrator was employed to examine the data, coding, and resultant findings.
Interviews
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with each of the participants. Two
were conducted in person, four were conducted over a private speaker-phone. All were
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recorded and carefully transcribed. Each of the participants was identified by initials, and
ultimately, those initials were changed as well to protect the identities of the participants.
At the start of each interview, the participants were asked the same questions as can be
found in Appendix I, and as the interviews progressed, individual follow-up questions
were asked as issues arose in the interviews. Additionally, more questions were
formulated as the constant analysis progressed to pursue points that the participants had
made, and these were asked more informally. Notes were taken in these follow-up
interviews. Finally, to clarify meaning, member checks were conducted to clarify issues
raised, verified by notes.
Questions were constructed and revised several times to try to illicit information
about multicultural practices in design pedagogy. Each interview started with these
questions and expanded with follow-up particular to each participants responses. After
the interview, several participants were contacted again to follow up on trends that
seemed to emerge from other interviews. The questionnaire is included in the Appendix
I. This type of interviewing and observation has been developed by researchers working
with their own cultures (Strickler, 1999, 36). As an experienced educator in a post-
secondary design faculty, I interviewed others within that same community, although I
intended to focus on instructors at other institutions to avoid the uncomfortable situation
of analyzing the practices of close colleagues. Once the interview had been conducted, the
interviews were reviewed for commonalities and differences, coded, and conclusions
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drawn that have some possibilities of generalization and application to design education.
The description of the coding can be found in Chapter IV, Findings, a discussion of the
Findings in Chapter V, and suggested multicultural strategies in Appendix III.
Artifacts
Artifacts were collected from the participants wherever possible. These included
slides taken of successful student projects, course conceptual statements, diagrammatic
explanations of concepts, and lesson outlines and explanations. These helped underscore
the results of the coding. Copies remain in my possession.
Triangulation
Most of the researchers studied suggest a triangulation (Strickler, 1999, p. 33)
of methods so that the limitations of one approach can be offset by the benefits of
another. Merriam (1998) describes the several forms of inquiry that help us understand
and explain the meaning of social phenomena as an umbrella concept (p. 5). As
mentioned previously, since it was unfeasible to use an observation segment in the
triangulation of the data, I increased the reliability of the study by employing an interrator
to examine the coding of the interviews and the resultant findings.
Data Analysis
Data was analyzed simultaneously with collection, using constant comparative
analysis, so that patterns and codes could be extracted and further questions and
directions can be explored. Merriam (1998) notes suggestions by Bogdan and Biklen
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(1992) to the effect that you force yourself to narrow your focus, to develop analytic
questions, to plan data collection that is constantly modified by what youve learned
before, to write comments and memos as you proceed, to use visual devices to clarify
material, and to explore analogies that are descriptive.
The initial data coding levels were illuminating but finally abandoned as unwieldy.
That initial coding is included here to document the struggle to make meaning from the
data. I attempted to view the data from several different viewpoints, and in doing so,
identified four slightly different coding levels. Each level took a broader view and placed
the data in a broader context. Some of the results were unanticipated, and others met
expectations given the nature of the literature on the subject. The first of these levels was
a close reading and coding based on the questions asked. At this level, I was looking for
common words and phrases used, and so identified thirteen categories, building the
categories as the interviews progressed. These first coding categories were:
1. Designing for other ethnicities, religions, cultures domestically and globally
2. Environmental responsibility
3. Social responsibility developing a sensitivity for the needs of the population
4. Preparing students to solve constantly changing human issues
5. Designers as tastemakers, creatively resolving daily societal challenges
6. Students benefit from sharing research and cultures
7. Uses of new media
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8. International students identified as multicultural
9. Domestic students of marginalized populations
10. Heightened awareness of other cultures or positionality issues than your own
11. Unexpected student responses
12. Instructor struggles with own biases
A deeper reading revealed some common themes, and so a secondary level of
coding was extrapolated. This second reading was more interpretive and thematic. Some
of the categories were suggested by the first coding, while others emerged from trying to
view the data from a broader perspective. The secondary coding featured the following:
1. The role of the instructor as facilitator for critical thinking in response to
changing nature of contemporary life and contemporary practice.
2. The responsiveness of experienced educators to student needs
3. The maintenance of the changed approach whether or not the stimulus has
been removed
4. The impact of the changed approach on other students as observed by the
instructor
5. The limited use of the new media
6. Identifies multicultural as international students in student body
7. Invisible domestic ethnic communities
8. The instructor as risk-taker willing to introduce controversial issues
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The secondary coding did widen the view in the analysis, but with further readings, other
important issues seemed to emerge.
It seemed as if it might be important to note just how many times the instructors
mentioned issues of positionality as defined by Tisdell (1995), such as ethnicity, age,
educational level, dis/ability, religion, socio-economic background, sexual orientation, and
gender. Thus, the tertiary coding level dealt with the positionality issues that frame
multiculturalism.
The last and broadest level considered in the initial coding looked at the
instructors multicultural approach as either content driven as a problem framer or as a
responsive teacher who adjusts to each situational stimulus, including multicultural issues.
A third category in this quaternary level was the combination of both content/problem-
framing and responsiveness.
While this four-level analysis was revealing, the overlaps were confusing, the
information could not be synthesized with such an unwieldy multilevel system, and the
four-level system of analysis was eventually abandoned.
Finally, the coding system was reorganized into three categories suggested by the
quaternary level of the previous coding style, but allowed a clearer view of the subtle
interweaving of the data:
1. Instructor sets the sociocultural agenda
2. Instructor is situationally responsive to students needs
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3. Instructor is both responsive to students needs and sets a
sociocultural agenda.
This schema proved more useful and was the one employed in the data analysis. The
data was extrapolated as reported in Chapter IV: Findings, and discussed and evaluated in
Chapter V: Discussion.
Interrators Analysis
While it was my intention to observe the participants in their classrooms as the
third arm of the triangulation, the type of respondent to initial inquiries for subjects and
their experiences with multiculturalism precluded such observations. Some instructors
spoke about previous experiences at other institutions, some were employing techniques
of responsive teaching that were entirely situational, and others, while they used specific
design problems that included multicultural strategies, would have found a one-time
observation of questionable value, given the nature of the classroom and the student body.
Therefore, I attempted to triangulate the analysis by enlisting an interrator to examine the
interviews and the artifacts. I developed a concise set of codes and definitions. The
interrator reexamined the data to find whether the coding scheme lead to similar findings.
The results of the interrators analysis of the data confirmed the efficacy of my final
coding scheme.
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Validity of the Analysis
According to Strickler (1999), accuracy of the transcripts is key to the validity of
the sampling and the analysis. The methodology must be thorough and systematic; key
ideas must be separated and categorized; relationships must be developed and
summarized. A visible record must be kept so that others can review the analysis.
Generalizations must be carefully developed so that enrichment of the field in general can
be employed.
The interviews have been carefully transcribed from voice tapes. They have been
coded from several different viewpoints and supported by independent coding and
artifacts. Further, an interrator was enlisted to review the uncoded transcripts to add
interratorary validity. His comments have been included in the findings and discussion
sections of this document.
Triangulation in the collection of data, as mentioned previously, was employed as
thoroughly as possible. Additionally, member checks were enlisted to underscore the
validity of the interpretations and the researchers biases and assumptions are included in
this chapter. All of the transcripts have been saved, but the names and other identifiers
have been removed. The artifacts collected are copies. The originals have been returned
to the participants.
Assumptions and Expectations
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The design of research on this model employs a drafting of expectations that may
or may not be met as a result of the interviews. My assumptions were, at the beginning
of this research, that there would be a large group of literature that I could use from which
to extrapolate design-oriented multicultural best practices methodology, indeed that
several studies had been done, measurements and frameworks inherent in best practices
were in place, and that it be a simple matter to find what worked in the design classroom,
based on interviews with design instructors.
I assumed that the design community would be eagerly forthcoming and self-
examining, and that responding to the changes of the marketplace would be commonplace.
I assumed that many instructors were reading about changes in design practices and design
education, and noticing themselves that the domestic students in their classrooms included
new more culturally diverse faces. I assumed that design educators would notice that
those designers published in Europe and the United States (and therefore, used as
examples in class) were overwhelmingly males of European heritage, and would be
evenhanded in searching for examples of designers who represented the constituency in
design classrooms.
I expected that the inquiry would focus solely on classroom inclusivity of
multicultural students and not on market pressures and market need for culturally savvy
graduates. I assumed that educators might be feeling somewhat uncomfortable with the
gap between what and how they were taught compared to what was relevant today, were
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responding to those changes by modifying their content and methodology in the area of
multiculturalism, and had actually developed multicultural classroom strategies that I
could document and learn from. I did not consider myself a change agent, but found that
just asking questions forced designers and educators to think about changes in their
classrooms and practices. Based on the few educators Ive had a chance to talk to about
my project, if the over one hundred solicitations that were sent via the Web and the
postal service have provoked some thought on multicultural issues, then, as ripples in a
pond, I cautiously assume that some small impact has been made.
Limitations
The analysis is limited by the bias of the researcher, and although attempts will be
made throughout to minimize such a bias, bias remains in the selection of sampling
subjects, in the coding phase, in the selection of questions to be asked, and in the analysis
of data. Indeed, the subject matter chosen for this research paper indicates a bias of sorts.
Finally, the generalizations, conclusions, and discussion are all based on the participant
base of six subjects, and the results may or may not inform design education as a whole.
As in any analysis, some data emerged that was not deemed significant by the researcher.
The biases of the researcher may also be revealed in the inclusion or exclusion of data of
lesser significance. That data might ultimately be significant, given further study and given
other studies that might emerge in this field.
Conclusion
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This is a descriptive qualitative research study within a constructivist theoretical
framework. It uses an semi-structured interviewing strategy that targets a group of six
experienced post-secondary design educators, all of whom self-identified as using
multicultural methodology or content in their classes. The data are comprised of carefully
transcribed interviews, as well as any artifacts that were deemed appropriate for support
material, and these data have been analyzed for coding and commonality of theme as the
interviews progressed. The validity of the analysis was a thorough and systematic
methodology, including an interrators analysis, with constant comparative analysis of
material, member checks, triangulation, and synthesis of findings. These Findings may be
found in Chapter IV. The study was limited by time constraints as well as the previously
established bias of the researcher.
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CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS
The purpose of this study is to identify the strategies of experienced post-secondary
design educators who address the multicultural character of their student bodies in their
design classrooms, as well as their strategies for preparing students for the multicultural
and global nature of contemporary design practices. The findings in this chapter are
based on data collected from interviews with these educators, from artifacts supplied by
them, and reexamined by an outside source.
S C H E M A
Instructor sets the sociocultural agenda
Sociocultural issues are embedded in the course content
Teachers prepare students to solve constantly changing contemporary issues
No mention of responding to individual student needs
Teacher as risk-taker: willing to introduce controversial sociocultural and
environmental issues
Instructor is situationally responsive to students needs
Individual student needs frame teacher responses: situational sensitivity
Maximizing student potential
No specific sociocultural agenda identified by teacher
Design process is developed as a framework for problem solving and
critical thinking
Responsive adjustments are retained and refined whether or not the
stimulus has been removed
Instructor is both responsive to individual student needs and sets a
sociocultural agenda
Heightened awareness of others cultural or positionality issues is stressed
Designing for others issues, (sociocultural and environmental) is stressed
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Design process is developed as a framework for problem solving and critical
thinking
Responsive adjustments retained and refined whether or not the stimulus
has been removed
Three significant categories were revealed by the data collected for this study and
are presented in this chapter. Each category is presented with subsets of emergent data
that reveal the subtle interweaving of interconnecting threads of information. The
subtexts in some of the categories echo those in other categories and in themselves are
revealing. Concluding this chapter is a review of the findings. A discussion of the
Findings can be found in Chapter V. The categories in the schema were derived from a
coding of the interviews and artifacts as well as from the results of the interrators
examination of those data. The term multiculturalism is used throughout to express the
sociocultural competence identified in positionality (the individual and shifting
intersection of ethnicity, gender, age, economic class, educational level, sexual orientation,
and religion) as developed by Tisdell (1995), as well as a set of pedagogical practices that
facilitates the use of positionality as a legitimate filter for classroom behaviors and
activities.
There were three distinct categories of responses that informed the purpose of
this study. These categories were significant in that they defined how experienced post-
secondary design instructors addressed multicultural issues. In the first of these
categories, the instructor sets the sociocultural agenda by specifying that the students will
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design for a specific client who represents a current sociocultural issue or by specifying in
the design problem that a specific issues of positionality (ethnicity, gender, age, economic
class, educational level, sexual orientation, religion, dis/ability) will be addressed in some
way. In the second category, instructors had no sociocultural agenda, but addressed
multiculturalism or issues of positionality via responsive design pedagogy in a way that
was situationally sensitive. That is, when they perceived that a student needed some
intervention from the instructor, some type of facilitation was devised, whether verbal
explanations, visual materials, or mentoring, among others. The last category was a
combination of the previous two, so that the instructor both specified in the design
problem that students would address a sociocultural issue, and was at the same time,
responsive to individual student needs. Subtexts could be found in each of the categories;
some of these were connected to other categories and some were specific to the individual
category only.
Instructor Sets the Sociocultural Agenda
The first category of data coalesced around course content as a way to address
multiculturalism in its broadest sense. This group of instructors chose to frame the
content of the class so that while students were solving design problems, they were also
dealing with issues of contemporary life in some way.
Sociocultural issues are embedded in the course content
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The instructors in this group used client profiles as a device to address
contemporary issues such as economic level, ethnicity, religion, aging, dis/ability, and
sexual orientation. In such a content-driven approach, students were directed, for
instance, to design housing for low-income Native American elders, or to design a remodel
of a library for a large Midwestern citys gay and lesbian community, or to design
transitional housing for the care of AIDS victims.
This method of addressing multiculturalism is driven by the instructors. The
instructors make the assumption that the discipline of design has a component of social
responsibility, and that the realities of design practices for which students are being
trained will yield clients who will demand that designers have some familiarity with the
sociocultural issues of contemporary life. It is the role of the instructor, in this category,
to frame that social responsibility and to require that students confront that particular
specified issue of positionality. The instructor, in other words, sets the agenda and
embeds that agenda in the course content. It is important to note that in this participant
group, that the issue to be addressed was specified by the instructor. Students were not
given the option, for instance, to choose an issue of positionality or to choose a
sociocultural issue to research and use as a framework for public housing, for instance.
For some students, as reported by the instructor, the choices of issues of positionality
were very problematic, and, in fact, impeded the students progress toward finding design
solutions.
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We have a public and a private role to play as designers, said HL, a design
educator, who went on to discuss the importance of understanding and being sensitive to
the needs of others, not just from a cultural point of view, but from a political view and
other areas of positionality. Another instructor, FD, expressed it this way: We are
seldom designing for our own unique lifestyle. We are always designing for [clients who
are] older, younger, [have] children, different ethnicities and religions. Understanding this
agenda and responsibility is very clear in design.
Teachers prepare student to solve constantly changing contemporary issues
The instructors in this group were both socioculturally concerned and used the
content of their classes to provide the framework for student exploration of
environmental, cultural, and social issues. The educators who dealt with built
environments particularly mentioned that they specifically frame design problems to deal
with changing human issues and societal changes. We have to solve human problems
that are always changing, all kinds of problems, and address the clients needs, said FD.
Those instructors who used course content as a way to frame the problem
required student research to explore contemporary societal issues in their own
communities as well as those around the world. These educators also used research
specifications in their course content as a means to explore issues of multiculturalism.
Because global marketing, and designs role in that marketing, was an issue in the
conceptual literature on contemporary issues in design, I asked each participant how they
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prepared design students for the potential of new media and global markets. Digital
media, specifically the Internet, gave students access to information in a very direct way,
and that exploration was a component in the framing of the problem for this group of
instructors. The students seemed to benefit from the research itself and from the
discussions that resulted from the research, according to the instructor. Research, then,
and particularly the Internet, was a key instrument for the instructors who set the cultural
and social agenda for their design classes. Digital media also were employed for client
presentations and to prepare for client presentations as directed by this group of
instructors.
Multicultural students identified
When asked to define the term multiculturalism, instructors in this group indicated
that this meant international students. They thought that the inclusion of international
students was beneficial for the student body as a whole, and they indicated that the
practices for which the students were preparing were global in nature. They considered
domestic issues of positionality important enough to illuminate those issues in light of
content, and yet they focused on international students as the sole stakeholders of
multiculturalism. Domestic students of other positionalities than the dominant culture
were rarely mentioned, although the issues of their lives were mentioned. One instructor,
HL, however, said that in one of her classes, the client profile included a maid that one
student called a Hispanic maid which enraged the Latina in the class. HL reported she
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was puzzled as to how to handle the situation. On the other hand, this same instructor
referred to the designation of Master Bedroom as an outdated, sexist and racist misnomer
and had her students use Main Bedroom instead. We have to start somewhere, she
said.
No mention of responding to individual student needs
One instructor was quite puzzled, she reported, that even at the graduate level,
only one-third of the students in the design class completed an assignment requiring the
remodel of a gay and lesbian library in a large Midwest city. Even when supported by
speakers, site tours, interviews, and other opportunities to explore client needs, the client
profile was so controversial as to upset the equilibrium of many of the students. The
students wanted the design problem to be client-neutral, said the educator. For many of
the students, the client had chosen a lifestyle that had moral implications, and they were
unwilling to look beyond their own values to explore the clients needs. The instructor,
on the other hand, did not seem interested in helping students find ways to approach both
the sociocultural issue and the design problem beyond framing a scenario that she thought
would be beneficial for the students and offering critique. To her, creating an
opportunity for students to wrestle with the sociocultural issue and the design problem,
arranging for speakers, and finally critiquing solutions was the core of her teaching.
Individually facilitating understanding of the sociocultural issue and applying that
framework to the design problem rested solely on the students, and their inability to
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synthesize the issue with the design problem continued to cause confusion for the
instructor, even years later. She was puzzled as to why students couldnt complete
rather than puzzled by what else she could have done to help them complete.
Teacher as risk-taker: willing to introduce controversial sociocultural and
environmental issues
Each of these educators who addressed multiculturalism by embedding it in the
content of the class was a risk-taker, an educator who was willing to introduce
controversial issues into the framework of the design problem. Each required that
students explore information concerning lifestyles, social and cultural issues, and societal
and environmental changes, and the students used that exploration to respond to their
hypothetical (or real) clients needs. In that exploration, the students assumptions are
often challenged because they are exposed to new ideas and new points of view, and the
discomfort of such a challenge sometimes produced unexpected results, such as the
inability of students to complete the design problem. One of the characteristics of this
group is that they deliberately design learning activities that challenge their students
individual positionalities. However they do not address those differences among students
nor do they include students in the framing of the problem.
Instructor Is Situationally Responsive to Students Needs
The second category of data coalesced around another strategy to address
multiculturalism and positionality issues, that is, by way of responsive design pedagogy.
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Design is a discipline that requires that the designer solve visual/spatial problems for
clients. Since design itself requires, and design pedagogy teaches, a method of problem
solving called design process, the problem to be solved can be any visual/spatial problem
for any type of client. Hence, design pedagogy may be particularly suited to a type of
responsive pedagogy that is situational in nature.
Individual student needs frame teacher responses: situational sensitivity
My role as a teacher, I believe, is to provide the fullest opportunity for all the
students in my class to realize their greatest potential, said BC. To that end, instructors
told of various strategies to optimize student potential. One of these is to include
diagrammatic materials so that domestic students who are primarily visual learners had
good support materials, and so international students had a means to overcome language
difficulties. I try to adapt, said JZ, I watchwhen I see problemsI stop and ask
myself whyI always have the written word as clearly developed as I possibly can.
And I do a demo of any new toolthen I give them a process page, something that forces
themto do process.
Another instructor, OT, said that her teaching methods were challenged by a deaf
student. The instructor taught a furniture and upholstery class, and while she had several
diagrammatic support materials, many of her explanations were embedded in
demonstrations. The deaf student asked that the demonstrations be more clearly
verbalized so that, through her interpreter, she could understand the concepts. OT said
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she had to make a considerable effort to talk directly to the student instead of to the
interpreter and to remain verbal when her natural inclination in this type of class was to
implement hands-on demonstrations.
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Educators in this group expressed a great deal of interest in maximizing student
potential. They had several strategies to do this that were global, framed by the design
problem, and involved challenging critical thinking and design process. They also had
strategies that were responsive to the individual needs of the students as identified by the
teacher.
No specific sociocultural agenda identified by teacher
The educators in this group did not have a specific sociocultural agenda as
specifically identified by the educator. Their interest was in maximizing individual
student potential in an individually responsive way rather than framing that maximization
in terms of sociocultural issues. They were interested in critical thinking, but the
framework of that thinking was vocational, in terms of solving the design problem, rather
than sociocultural.
Educators express respect for students
Another subset in the responsiveness of experienced educators to student needs
and to maximizing their potential is the respect that the instructors mentioned for their
students. hooks (1994) suggests that the professor must genuinely value everyones
presence (p. 8) and these instructors so indicated. Said NS:
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I always ask the students why they are taking the class. I want people to express
and verbalize why theyre thereIt sets the stage for people to establish
themselves as individuals, that they have goals, and everybody else is a witness to
it.
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Another instructor (JZ) put it this way:
I want to be respected as a human being and I want to respect every other person
who passes through my door in spite of the fact that they might look pretty
different than I look or their beliefs may be extremely different from mine
thinking
Design process is a form of critical thinking, of development, evaluation, selection
and analysis, and finally testing of design solutions, according to some authors
(Langsdorf, 1989, Allen, Berkowitz, Hunt & Louden, 1999, Leinbach, 1998), and this
group of participants indicated that their role in teaching was to facilitate that critical
thinking. Instructor CH said, I frequently learn as much from the students as they learn
from me This group of instructors saw their roles as a facilitator for critical thinking
so that students could develop methods to respond to the changing nature of
contemporary life and contemporary practice, no matter what those changes might be. I
teach the process of designno matter how the market changes, that process will remain
a valid processI try to ask questions that get them to respond to design problems, said
BC.
JZ said that learning design changes students and helps them problem solve in
other areas of their lives. Teaching design involves effectively getting people to see
things differently than they had beforeit makes people more aware[they] start seeing
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design in action and take it down to a molecular structure andout to the universal. It
does change people BC said that he had not noticed that students of domestic
marginalized populations or that students of international populations went through the
design process which students are taught, the critical thinking component of design, in
any different way than students of the dominant culture, except that international
students were reluctant to ask questions of the instructor. Other ethnicities reveal
themselves to me typically in terms of languages or design solutions. And to the extent
that the student can verbalize with me, we can talk about them.
The role of new media is limited to research
In this group of responsive instructors, digital media played a role in research and
as a time-saver in supplementing hand-wrist skills, but did not replace traditional skills.
No mention was made of the marketing or communication potential of the Internet, nor
was mention made of cross-cultural training for use in communicating with clients or
resources in other countries.
When students are required to research other cultures through various means, and
that research is expressed in class in some way, the educators in the group indicated that
all the students seemed to benefit. Sometimes this was used as an extra credit assignment
and sometimes it was an integral part of the design problem. One instructor, JZ, used a
project that involved the creation of a mask to encourage students to research cultures
who use masks and to bring in examples of masks that cultures of their own ethnicity
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might have used. This was an opportunity that international students seized to
demonstrate cultural pride and to elevate their grade, said the instructor. OT, another
instructor, said that the styles of furniture brought in by her students were an
opportunity to talk about and research the lines and the fabrics and to compare the
disparate styles in the classroom. For this group of instructors, the marketing potential
of digital media was ignored in favor of the access to information used in research and the
potential of the tool to supplement traditional skills.
This group of instructors, too, thought that the term multicultural primarily
qualified international students. The instructors had modified their classroom
methodology to accommodate the international student, making materials more visual,
more diagrammatic, more clearly verbally defined for the international student.
And yet, the instructors seemed as a group to have developed some awareness of
domestic students of varied positionalities but were somewhat confused about what to do
to maximize their potential. JZ said about Native American students:
I know theyre thereThey dont always identify themselves, but sometimes
they do. Sometimes their work has a very distinct flavor of their heritagebut I
really didnt do anything with it, so much as I became aware ofoh look, shes
taking her cultural heritage and developing a voice that meets the project
parameters. And it looks like the project and yet it has this background, it has
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this voice to it that is different from anyone in the class. But I never made any
mention of it, because I thought, well, maybe that I shouldnt.
In this case, the instructor did not perceive that the Native American students were
struggling or that some kind of adaptation on the part of the instructor would facilitate
learning. On the other hand, she did perceive that students with ADD (Attention Deficit
Disorder) were having difficulty. Her lessons are carefully divided up with portions due
each week. She has a check system so that students can track their progress, and she
divides the class up so that students can be brought into the moment with specific tasks
that build to the completion of the project. She shares her own challenge with students
with ADD:
OK, Im part of a club. I didnt want to be part of this club; however, recognizing
that, I dont beat myself up over it when I have to read a sentence seven times
before it processes into a language, you know, that its not just little shapes on a
page because Im so right-brained. And Im wondering if not a large percentage of
our ADD children are right-brained. Theyre wired differently. Theyre the
spatial relationship peopleThey come in the door, and I say, hey, probably a
lot of you people come to an art school because you have more of the right brain
skills. My guess is that youve been a square peg, you know, and someoness
been trying to force you into a round holeand you felt like a weirdo and you
probably acted like a weirdoI say welcome home. I am ADD. A lot of our
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faculty is dyslexic...Were a bunch of right-brainers here. We see the world
differently. We approach things differently. And give yourself permission to be
very smart in a different way than what our education systemis willing to deal
with. And you know, you can see their little eyes brighten up, andI have
actually attached it to certain design principles and different portions of the class.
This seems to suggest that the situationally sensitive design educator responds to student
needs, as perceived and identified by that instructor. Thus the adaptive response requires
a perceived need to initiate the response. If a need cannot be isolated and clarified by the
instructor, then a response is not formulated and enacted.
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The paradox of situationally sensitive instructors
Even though these instructors were situationally sensitive, they did not seem to
question if their responses to the students were what the students needed or wanted.
They seemed confident that how they responded to what they perceived as the students
needs was appropriate and that their adaptation ameliorated the students needs. They
had responded to the need for problem solving, but had not followed up in an overt way,
such as a question and answer dialogue, to see if their response had actually resolved the
problem or if the problem had been resolved by an unknown and/or unexamined
coincidence.
Responsive adjustments are retained and refined whether or not the stimulus
has been removed
The methods of the situationally responsive instructor, utilized as a way to
address multiculturalism and issues of positionality, demands much of the instructors,
including a willingness to change and adapt materials and methodology to respond to the
needs of their students as the instructors perceive those needs. The instructors who use
this responsive design pedagogy reported that they retained the adaptation whether the
stimulus was maintained or withdrawn. That is, if the instructor developed more visual
materials to accommodate student needs, those materials remained as a part of their
subsequent classes. If the instructor became more verbal as a response to a particular
students needs, that instructor maintained more verbal explanations in subsequent
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classes. If the instructor combined oral, written, graphic visuals, and demonstration to
facilitate student needs, those remained as part of the class materials. These expanded
materials were used as a foundation to further refine instruments to facilitate the
maximizing of student potential.
Instructor Is Both Situationally Responsive to Students Needs and Sets A
Sociocultural Agenda
The third category of data formed around those instructors who both practiced
responsive design pedagogy and set the agenda by embedding sociocultural issues in
course content. Some of the data draws from previous categories and some is particular
to this one.
Heightened awareness of others cultural or positionality issues is stressed
These educators had indicated that they modified materials and methodologies to
facilitate the maximizing of student potential, that they retained those modifications for
subsequent classes, and that they used research as a tool to heighten students awareness
of other ethnicities, cultures, positionalities. These educators also framed the content of
their classes so that issues of multiculturalism and positionality had to be addressed as
part of the design solution, and in doing so, were risk takers. Part of their motivation was
to heighten awareness of others cultural or positionality issues either in the classroom or
in their future practices.
Designing for others issues, environmentally, socially, and culturally
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BC, an instructor who was included in this group, developed a client profile that
included a wheelchair-bound client. The descriptors of this client did not include the
words handicapped or disabled. Students in the built environment disciplines have to
consider the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) to make sure their designs comply
with accessibility standards. This client was also profiled to have an affinity for
Oriental style. In this framing of the problem, students of many positionalities had to
confront stereotypes in what they assumed was Oriental and to accommodate a client
who had special needs in a way that would be integrated into the style preference. It was
a challenge for the domestic students to move beyond a stereotype in their research to
define what an American client might mean by Oriental style, and for the international
students from Asian countries to try to understand what a client from the United States
might mean given that many of the international students live in contemporary high-rise
or Western style single family houses in their home countries.
thinking
Instructor BC used a question and answer Socratic methodology, so students
could examine their solutions and optimize the potential of their design processes and
design solutions. EH: ..so what youre working with is critical thinking and design
process, rather than BC: Absolutely, thats why Im there. Everything is just
trimming on the turkey. In this instructors approach to teaching in general, the subject
at hand is design process, regardless of the problem framed, as that process can be used to
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address any design problem as a student and as a professional. For this instructor, the
multicultural approach is in the individual dialogue, adapted to each student, in the
materials prepared in explanation as a result of perceived students needs, and in the
framing of the design problem.
JZ, another instructor in this group, is both responsive in her methodology, and in
framed problems so that students could choose their own issues of positionality, persons
of stature in their eyes, or issues of contemporary society that they wished to address.
She was explicit in her written descriptions of the design problems and her expectations
to accommodate those who read as the primary mode of learning and international
students who have indicated that they want to be able to translate her expectations. She
had many visual examples for visual learners, she lectured to accommodate oral learners,
she had worksheets to accommodate kinesthetic learners, and she modified her delivery of
any of these modes if she noticed that students from one group or another were not
achieving at their highest potential. She had developed a design problem that was
implemented in both digital typography and traditional hand/wrist, cut and paste
typography classes. The students were asked to choose a contemporary issue that
interests them or a prominent person they admire to develop a magazine cover. The
students were required to share with the class in critique their choices and the research
they had done to support those choices. The issues and people are diverse and global in
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nature, and the choices were entirely the students. Not only did the students learn from
the choices they made, but they also had the opportunity to learn from each other about
issues that interested them. With this instructor, the design problem was framed in such a
way that students could choose a person or an issue that interested them rather than
having any particular issue or significant person imposed upon them.
Responsive adjustments retained and refined whether or not the stimulus has
been removed
This group of instructors retained the materials they had created to respond to the
needs of their students and expanded upon them, trying to ensure that the need that had
been met would be continually met. They expanded their visual and verbal materials
depending on new illustrations encountered or created, but did not need new stimulus to
do so. They did not look for other issues of positionality that might require
accommodation, however.
The instructors in this group who had been party to several discussions on
multicultural issues in a segment of design education prior to the interview included
domestic students of marginalized populations in their definitions of the word
multicultural, as well s other broader issues of marginalization, including learning styles.
Conclusion
The data revealed that the approaches to multiculturalism could be categorized
into three sections. In the first of these, the instructors set the agenda and addressed
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sociocultural issues by embedding them in the course content. These instructors were
personal and professional risk-takers who were willing to introduce students to
controversial issues in their efforts to prepare them for future practices and contemporary
life. In the second category, the instructors were responsive to student needs and focused
on maximizing student potential. Instructors in the second group addressed
multiculturalism through a situationally responsive design pedagogy in which the
instructor responded to the needs of the changing student body and in particular to the
student needs in each class, and modified the delivery of materials to suit the students in
that class. Because design itself requires that the designer be responsive to client needs,
design educators may be particularly suited to this approach. The third category
combined the previous two methods so that the instructors both set the agenda by
embedding sociocultural issues in the content of their courses so that students had to
confront issues of multiculturalism, while at the same time were responsive to the
individual needs of the students, and in responding to those needs, developed materials to
aid in that response. Both the second and third groups retained the newly developed
materials as a foundation upon which to build new materials. Instructors in the first and
third groups were risk-takers who were willing to introduce controversial issues of an
environmental, multicultural, and social nature in order to prepare students for their future
practices. New media was used in all the groups as a tool to support and accelerate
traditional skills and as a tool of research, but not as a connective professional web or a
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marketing device. International students were the first, and sometimes the only
stakeholders identified as multicultural.
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CHAPTER V: DISCUSSION
This chapter will relate the Findings collected to the literature introduced in
Chapter II, explore the relationship of the initial intent in this study to the Findings and
literature, discuss the interpretations of the Findings, suggest areas for future study, and
develop some strategies for possible application to multicultural design pedagogy that
could be extrapolated from the literature and from the Findings. The purpose of this study
is to identify the strategies of experienced post-secondary design educators who address
the multicultural character of their student bodies in their design classrooms, as well as
their strategies for preparing students for the multicultural and global nature of
contemporary design practices.
The Relationship of Initial Intent to Results
When I initiated this study, I intended to collect and examine specific
methodology that design instructors employed to facilitate the learning of multicultural
student populations. Id initiated a few tactics in my own classroom before I had begun to
explore this subject area, and I assumed that other instructors must have multicultural
strategies that I could learn about and from which my students could benefit. I had a
working title for this study that included best practices, assuming that there already
was a body of design-oriented multicultural methodology that could be culled, measured
and compared in some way, and from which could be formulated a set of discrete
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classroom behaviors that would maximize student potential and their preparation for
practice.
I was surprised to find that the design educators who were study particpants
identified broad approaches to the issue rather than specific tactics that heightened
multicultural awareness among the students, addressed issues of multiculturalism for
marginalized student groups, and prepared students for the multiculturalism that
contemporary practices demand. Thus the responses of the study participants reframed
and redefined the scope of this study, and it is those results that are included herein.
The Differences in the Approaches to Multiculturalism
All the participants in the study group had self-identified as using multicultural
strategies. As indicated, except those who had been working in this area, or those who
had been party to conversations during the early work on this study, most instructors
identificated the word multicultural with international students. All the subjects seemed
interested in maximizing the students potential, and, in that maximization, considered
multicultural issues of importance. This finding is corroborated by work done in adult
education by Tisdell and McLaurin (1994) in which adult educators intention in
multicultural practices was to increase students critical thinking skills and help them to
develop a broader, more inclusive perspective (p. 33, Tisdell, 1995). As Instructor BC
said, thats why Im there. Everything is just trimming on the turkey.
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Each of the instructors who participated in the study made decisions to address
multicultural issues in their classrooms, whether their methods were proactive or reactive.
Each of these decisions is a political decision, according to Tisdell (1995). What is
included or not included in content and methodology is a matter of a political posture that
either supports or challenges the status quo. For Tisdell, there are three levels of
inclusivity (classroom/learning activity, institution/curriculum, changing social needs). She
also suggests that attention be paid to the hidden curriculum, the behaviors that in an
overt but less conscious way support the status quo. Groat and Ahrentzen (1996)
discuss how students of broadly defined multicultural populations experienced the hidden
agenda in architectural education and how that hidden agenda affected their persistence,
perceived success, and attachment to the field of architecture.
As with any typology, such as the one illustrated in the Schema, a perfect fit with
any one individual is rare, and indeed under some circumstances in this study, an
instructor will fit into another group entirely. The change from one category to another
seemed to find definition in the concept of a positionality issue of the first emergency
(Pagenhart, 1994), which calls for changing priorities as a result of changing
circumstances. For instance, JZ was a situationally responsive educator with no
sociocultural agenda. No matter how responsive she was, she seemed unsure how to
respond to some Native American and African American students unless there was some
overt symptom of difficulty or the student initiated a call for help. She seemed to need an
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overt stimulus, such as students asking questions after class that clearly demonstrated
that they did not understand the lecture or an assignment, to create a responsive strategy.
Thus, her multicultural instructional approach seemed to fit into the second category of
situational responsiveness. On the other hand, she was one of two participants who
identified domestic students of marginalized populations in her definition of multicultural.
Additionally, she was also situationally responsive and set a sociocultural agenda in
another class and with another assignment, fitting, in that particular situation, into the
third category.
Each Approach Has Limitations and Benefits
Each of the approaches noted in the Findings, (a) Instructor sets the sociocultural
agenda, (b) Instructor is situationally responsive to students needs, (c) Instructor is both
responsive to individual student needs and sets a sociocultural agenda, has its limitations
and its benefits. Instructors who set the cultural and/or social agenda closely framed the
design problem: low-income housing for Native American elders, for instance. While
many design problems encountered by students are framed by competitions students are
encouraged to enter, a more open-ended design problem might yield more satisfying
results. Some instructors in the third group did use this expanded method of imbedding
the sociocultural agenda in the content, but others in that group did not. It might be
useful, then, to frame the social issue within the design problem in a larger context, so that
the student can self-determine which issue of positionality would be used to frame the
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design problem. A social issue would still be examined, but the student would be engaged
because it would have been a matter of choice and would have been allowed to have some
contextual relevance to his/her own life and future practice. Students might identify with
another issue of positionality, based on their first emergency, as Pagenhart (1994)
suggests. That is not to say that the instructor would not set the agenda, but the agenda
would be within a larger framework. The particular issue of interest to the instructor,
perhaps based on his/her own positionality, could come out in critique, or in
conversation, or in presentations, or in research. Indeed, more issues of positionality
have the potential to be approached in this manner, and all the participants in the
classroom, students and instructor, have the opportunity to share in critique, discuss
options, and learn from each other.
Resources from the Literature
The literature was rich with possibilities of extrapolation for application of
multicultural strategies in post-secondary design education. There is some very useful
literature that explores multiculturalism in art curricula in the K-12 arena (Cahan and
Kocur, 1996; Stinespring and Kennedy, 1995), some of which includes annotated
bibliography of literature available on art education. Art is not design, however, as noted
earlier in this paper, although some of what has been offered in the works mentioned
above can be usefully extrapolated for post-secondary design education, including specific
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artists, categories of exploration such as the Vietnam War or the effects of AIDS on
society, among others.
There is a great deal of conceptual literature and a group of studies on
multiculturalism in higher education (Camp, 1994; Gingerich et al., 1999; Bowen et al.,
1999). These will be useful for extrapolation, but must be modified for design classrooms.
There is conceptual literature that explores the need for a more pluralistic approach in
design classrooms in higher education (Davis, 1998; Cullen, 1997). However, there seems
to be very little multicultural literature available that a design instructor can directly apply
to the classroom. If we need such a methodology as the conceptual literature implies,
what does it look like? Where can it be found? I wanted and expected to be able to shop
around for some strategies and, finding the best available, employ them in my design
classroom.
I was interested to find, in the conceptual literature surrounding the challenges in
design education today, that the pressures of multiculturalism on design content and
pedagogy are from within the classroom and from within practice, both pointing toward
design education, both demanding modification of design education itself. So, there was
not one multicultural impulse that design education had to deal with but two, one two-
part impulse from within the classroom, and one from within practice. As is mentioned
in the literature (Demmitt, 1999, Shulman, 1998), professional practices inform
professional education and vice versa, with one or the other dominating, depending on the
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era. Within the classroom, the multicultural impulse deals with (a) maximizing the
potential of all design students, including those of marginalized populations, while they
are in the classroom, and (b) the potential of heightening the sensitivity of all students to
each others multicultural issues. The impulse from the world of practice indicates that
the global nature of design practices demands that those who enter practice be
multiculturally competent to deal with the demands of those global practices. Hence,
design education must not only find ways to be inclusive and maximize the potential of
all students in the design classroom, but also address multicultural competency so that all
students in design classrooms have a means to explore the needs of their future global
clients, being particularly sensitive to the use of word, symbol, and color. The study,
however, indicates that the impulse from the world of practice has yet to make its mark
on the classroom, and that the instructors interviewed had not yet perceived this need. It
may be that the study participants do not yet market on the Internet or their practices do
not include international clients, and that another group of participants who are designing
for and through the digital world may already be confronting this issue. Additionally, as
previously indicated (Cullen, 1998), the World Wide Web is revolutionizing perceptions
of who clients are and what their target markets are. There is a time lapse between what
is needed in the marketplace and its filtration into the professional classroom. Some
(Margolin 1998, Davis 1998a, Buchanan, 1998a) are thus suggesting that research in
design education be more intimately involved with practice so that the time lag can be
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shortened, and the framework of design education can be formulated so that market
response can be swifter.
The Relationship of the Findings to the Literature
As previously mentioned in this chapter, the study had initially been framed by
the literature and then became reframed by the study participants. The Findings,
however, corroborated some of the literature, and pointed to gaps in educational practice,
not only in the multicultural pedagogy and methodology, but in the support of
educational administration as well.
Process vs. content in the structure of curriculum
In the literature, Findeli (1990) suggests that the curriculum is vocational if the
school (or teacher) is content-driven; and that the curriculum is process-oriented if the
school (teacher) is pedagogy driven. Mology-Nagy, says Findeli, tried to unite this
dualism into a organic-functionalist method [that] has to proceed from eyesight to
insight for a proper outline of the design problem (p. 12). He combined Goethes
intuitive meaning making with Deweys contextually situated meaning making. While in
Moholy-Nagys model, the teacher was seen as a facilitator to guide the student in
discovering his/her own potential, the data in my study reveals that teachers facilitate in
several different ways. In one way, the teacher tries to proactively facilitate an
understanding of current sociocultural issues that professional design practice will demand
of the students and embeds that sociocultural issue in a visual/spatial design problem. In
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the second and third groups, in which the instructor is situationally responsive, the
instructor is a facilitator for individual student needs, and is reactive or responsive to
situations in which students have difficulty with some facet of the class. Eventually, the
teachers in these latter groups have employed a series of facilitating behaviors (modifying
visual materials, becoming more verbally explanatory, providing examples) that seem to
remove many of the difficulties experienced by identifiable groups, such as international
students or students who are visual/spatial learners. Once an overt set of difficulties
seems to be overcome and seems to be continually addressed with the retention of the
responsive materials or behaviors, do the responsive and problem-solving behaviors of the
teacher find new more subtle ground for responsiveness? Does that teacher then begin to
identify ways in which her/his classroom methodologies can optimize the potential of
other groups of students, more subtly organized?
JZ, an instructor in the group that is both responsive and agenda setting, organizes
her classroom methodology so that as many learning styles as possible are facilitated;
those who read well and those who are much more visual are accommodated. She also
includes hand-on activities immediately after lectures to recapture the attention of
students with kinesthetic learning styles and those with attention defcits. International
students are accommodated by having explicit written materials explaining the lecture.
Learning styles are also an issue of the multicultural matrix for participant MP.
Who is a multiculturally responsive teacher?
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Before a teacher can employ strategies that address the multicultural character of
design students, the teacher needs to address those issues and assumptions him/herself.
The examination of comfortable and familiar assumptions by which one lives ones life is
upsetting. It requires some willingness to move out of the comfort zone that frames ones
life into a shifting area of scrutiny and change. One doesnt get to just shift into another
set of assumptions either; rather, one must continuously scan the horizon for more subtle
assumptions and hidden agenda. Then one must act on that reframing. This is the
ultimate post-modern approach in that not only does it acknowledge personal and
therefore relativistic ways of knowing, but it also says that these issues of positionality
that frame knowing continuously shift. It is difficult to maintain equilibrium in ones
personal life with this stance, and even more difficult to do so in the classroom. It is also
very difficult to do so without support. Those instructors who were responsive to
student needs may have already experienced some discrimination or issue of positionality
themselves that helped reframe their cultural assumptions in some way. Of course, as
MP mentioned in her interview, one could enlarge the frame of multiculturalism so far that
there was no longer any dominant group, and indeed, that is the ultimate inclusive goal
that education have no hidden agenda, no barriers to the opportunity to learn and to the
opportunity to accomplish ones goal.
An interesting outcome of examining cultural assumptions is a transformation of
identity. Wlodkowski and Ginsberg (1995) suggest that identity is a powerful influence
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on our motivation (p. 302), and that as we reflect and change, we also must claim our
new identity. Wlodkowski and Ginsberg posit that when students are respected and
connected in the educational context, and when they have some choice in framing the
learning, they find relevance in the learning activity. They learn when they can then
engage in the challenging and authentic experiences that they perceive can enhance their
effectiveness in their future practices (p. 113).
The situationally responsive educators in the study group talk about the issue of
facilitating respect and authenticity. Study participant OT put it this way:
I always ask the students why they are taking the class. I want people to express
and verbalize why theyre thereIt sets the stage for people to establish
themselves as individuals, that they have goals, and everybody else is a witness to
it.
Another instructor said:
I want to be respected as a human being and I want to respect every other person
who passes through my door in spite of the fact that they might look pretty
different than I look or their beliefs may be extremely different from mine
Still another instructor (BC) said, I frequently learn as much from the students
as they learn from me
For Tisdell (1995), all education is constructed from someones or some groups
perspective, and when critically examined, the veil of presumed neutrality is lifted,
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which can be unsettling for the student, the faculty, and the institution alike (p. 88).
Indeed, some deeply buried assumptions are hegemonic, detrimental to the teachers
themselves, but beneficial to the institution for which they work (Brookfield, 1995). Even
in the most blatant fiscal terms, if students cannot persist in their educational programs
because of issues of positionality and as a result of hidden agenda, they will not continue
to pay tuition that supports those educational institutions, and they cannot repay loans
that serve to facilitate their education. All institutional education requires funding and
requires students, even publicly funded institutions: No students -- no funds -- no
institution. Further, if design education purports to prepare students for future design
practices, those practices, no matter in which of the many design disciplines, require some
multicultural competency because of their colleagues multicultural issues, and because of
the possibilities of communication with clients and suppliers in not just our own country,
but within the global marketplace.
The perpetuation of cultural assumptions benefits the status quo. For those who
have benefited from the status quo, or who are a part of the dominant culture (as are
many of the instructors and administrators), there is an attitude of If it aint broke, dont
fix it. But for many students and for some teachers in design classrooms, it is broke, as is
revealed in Groat and Ahrentzen (1996). Examining ones assumptions allows one to
develop an equilibrium amid change found in choices and in behaviors that support ones
choices. Developing pedagogical strategies based upon the acknowledgement and
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examination of ones own positionality and that of ones students is the first step to a
democratic classroom, and one in which students can begin to direct their own educational
processes in and out of the classroom.
Faculty development seems to be an ideal context in which to begin to address
multicultural issues. Some authors (Howard-Hamilton, Richardson, and Shuford, 1998,
Gingerich et al., 1999) contend that cultural competence focuses on (a) an awareness of
ones assumptions, values, biases, limitations, and world view; (b) an understanding of
the world view of the culturally different client; (c) the development of techniques for
life-long learning about diversity issues. These authors suggest a development of cultural
competence goals for the instructors in an institution. I would add issues of positionality
of students and teachers to address multicultural competence. In design education, the
global marketplace in which design students will practice seems to require such a
competence.
Some strategies that would be useful in developing such a multicultural
competence might be the exploration of insider/outsider positionality from both the
instructors and the students point of view. Role playing could be employed to increase
sensitivity to others issues of positionality so that the instructor becomes more aware of
shifting first-emergency issues (Pagenhart, 1994). Instructors could also, in such role
playing, explore various hidden agendas that might be unconsciously employed in the
classroom and that might limit the potential rather than maximizing the potential of some
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students. Learning styles and educational discrimination of visual/spatial learners could
be discussed, and the means to appeal to the dominant type found in a design classroom
explored (Nickerson, 1998). Finally, Myers-Briggs Personality or Kiersey Preference
sorters could inform instructors in their faculty training so that they could identify their
own strengths and challenges in maximizing student potential. These strategies are listed
in Appendix III.
While faculty development might be a good forum within which to initiate an
awareness of multiculturalism, the quality of the faculty development program, the
comfort level of the developer, the willingness of the faculty to engage with the developer,
and/or the safety of such an engagement, all could determine to what degree such a
program might succeed. Further, how could that learning/teaching community continue to
process these issues and to grow in their multicultural competence? Neilsen and
Stambaugh (1998) agree with Brookfield as noted above. Once strategies of inclusion and
value are introduced, they must be sustained if they are to be transformative, according to
the authors. Not only should the dialogue be continued, but also teaching strategies
should be examined to reveal cultural hegemony in the classroom and institute new
practices that are both inclusive and instructive. Thus, the multicultural optimum seems
to be (a) an institutional program that values and continues to support teachers growth in
the examination of cultural assumptions and in developing inclusive classroom strategies;
(b) the instructors continued engagement in such examination of assumptions,
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development of inclusive strategies, and implementation of them; (c) the increasing
educational success of multicultural design students; (d) the student bodys increasing
multicultural awareness in the design classroom, and finally, (e) the multicultural
competency of all design students prepared for contemporary global practices.
Risk of challenging the status quo
Risk is an issue in multiculturalism, according to Garcia (1994) and Tisdell (1995).
Any challenge to the status quo means that the challenger risks political capital, whatever
the institution. Each of the instructors who were in the subject group that set the social
or cultural agenda were risk-takers. They openly challenged students to investigate
multicultural issues that were not the students own, but that they might be required to
deal with as professionals. According to one instructor, the combination of social issue
and design problem proved to be too much for some students to handle, and these
students were unable to complete the class assignment. If the students were unable to
complete, did they take their inability to deal with a social issue out on the instructor?
The ramifications of risk-taking behavior in the group that sets the sociocultural agenda in
the design classroom and the hesitancy of instructors to take risks in their design
classrooms as a tacit means of supporting the status quo are both areas worth further
study.
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Interpretations of Results
Some of the implications of this study can be found in the nascent condition of
this type of inquiry in design education. Conceptual articles to the contrary, the impact
of the Internet and global marketing is just now being felt - and hardly being considered -
by most of the faculty members in this study. Most use digital media personally, but
most (not all) had not yet begun to acquire strategies to investigate its marketing
possibilities or its social and commercial connective possibilities. Indeed, encouraging
students to use the Web to display their portfolios on websites and to be multiculturally
competent while doing so, to digitally prepare their portfolios, did not appear in the
transcripts. Thus, while the literature points to the need for multicultural awareness and
competency to be discussed in design classrooms to prepare students for the enormous
potential that the Internet affords designers, these design educators have yet to implement
practice-driven multicultural competence conceptually in the classroom. The design
educators saw the Internet as a tool for expanded research, with much critical examination
applied to the resources to be found, but the interconnection of global markets and global
clientele, and the multicultural competence to do so, has yet to be thoroughly investigated
as worthy subject matter for the design classroom.
For instance, if you were a design student from urban Baltimore, would low-
income housing for Native American elders have some relevance for you, or could you
learn as much by designing low-income housing for a population in urban Baltimore?
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Could you frame the design problem so that the target population of low-income housing
could be one of each students interest, as suggested in Appendix III? The student would
still be addressing a design and a socioeconomic problem, and its particular application
would be a matter of choice. In the presentation, research and information about the
population would be shared with the class so that the variety in the students choices
would be a matter of class enrichment. Again, how and what can we learn from each
other? (hooks, 1994, Braaten & Williams, 1997).
One instructor, FD, used this technique in assigning the design of an American
Embassy in the country of the students choice. Research into climate, security, cultural
imagery, politics, and ethnicity defined how the design problem would be framed, and the
resultant solution and presentations were enriching for all the students and for the
instructor. JZ did this in a graphic design classroom in which a magazine cover was
designed that featured a leader of any kind that the student admired. The students
choices as well as their design solutions were explored by the class in presentations.
Student choices both in terms of sociocultural content and design solution were the issue
for engagement and enrichment of the students and the instructor.
When an instructor is situationally responsive to students needs, the response
chosen by the instructor may or may not address the provoking issue. The instructor
makes assumptions, for instance, that if some students do not clearly understand his/her
oral instructions, written instructions should be added. If some students improve their
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success in the classroom, the instructor might attribute the improved success to the
written instructions, when in fact the improvement might have come from a change in the
seating, or a different type of problem, a clearer oral delivery, or a translator. So, the
means of response might be better coupled with a feedback loop, such as student inquiry
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Fig. 2: Changes in the dynamics of design and design education in the United States
Eurocentric Mass Markets
Eurocentric Design Education
Eurocentric Students
Multicultural Design Education
Instruction (Content and Methodology)
and Administration
Multicultural Design Students
Multicultural Needs of Design Practice
in the Global Marketplace
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or student questionnaires about learning styles or about a students classroom issues,
such as the need for visual materials, for clearer verbal instructors, for time management
strategies, for a quiet classroom, for more individual help, among others. Thus, the
responsive strategy would have a follow-up mechanism to measure its efficacy.
Further, three more limitations arise. The instructors in the first group seemed
blissfully unaware that the students might struggle with the design problem and with the
sociocultural issue. They did not perceive that the students difficulties deserved a
pedagogical response. The situationally responsive instructor, on the other hand, would
frame a pedagogical response to a students difficulties. However, developing a strategy
that responds to students needs is just that responsive. It requires that a student
express or that the instructor perceive a difficulty in student comprehension. It is
reactive rather than proactive. Designers (and design instructors) are in a responsive field,
problem solving and trouble shooting on behalf of their clients. It follows that many
design educators would be situationally responsive in their classrooms as well as their
practices. The paradox with this group of educators is that while they were very willing
to respond to the needs of the students, they seemed unable to anticipate the needs of
various student positionalities. They were situationally sensitive and therefore
responded to stimulus. Remove the stimulus, and they continued to respond as if the
stimulus was present. They did not look for other ways to respond or other ways to
address any other particular issue of multiculturalism. They were not critically reflective
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of their teaching practice in a way that would enable them to be proactive toward other
problems students might encounter.
The second issue is that responsive pedagogy is derived from what the need of the
student is perceived to be, filtered by the instructors own shifting multicultural matrix
(among other filters), and the students need may or may not be similarly driven. Since
no feedback loop is in place, the response may or may not address the students actual
need. Multicultural responses, as identified in the definitions, would require that ones
own shifting positionality would be examined and that of the students as well to serve as
a filter for developing inclusive classroom strategies.
The third limitation is that the instructor must be in the classroom with the
students to be situationally responsive in the way described. The instructor reads the
class, visually scanning, as JZ mentioned, to see if students are comprehending the
material. Situationally responsiveness would have to take an entirely different form in a
distance learning classroom or a teaching/learning forum that does not employ physical
proximity.
The benefits of a situationally responsive strategy are that at least some student
needs are met and those adaptive strategies seem to benefit individuals and the class as a
whole, and succeeding individuals as well as entire classes. All the instructors kept their
adaptive materials or strategies and employed them in succeeding classes, building on this
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base over time. They continued to fine-tune their materials and strategies to fit the
constituents in each classroom.
The combined category in the last instructor category described in the Findings,
while initially seeming the best of the three, also includes the limitations from both of the
preceding categories. As has been discussed previously, design itself has a tradition of
elitism, in which a few have dictated what intelligent design is, what it looks like, and how
it should be valued. Here again, in the approach in which the instructor sets the
sociocultural agenda, the instructor assumes that what his/her choices are, in terms of
agenda or in terms of situational response, are the correct choices if some students
improve or if some students accomplish the goal. I, too, am making an assumption when
I suggest that self-direction within a framework would be a better choice. In
contemporary design practices, designers are expected to have foundation skills and know
how to critically think and process in design terms. Self-direction is a necessary part of
practice. However, design students are not always mature enough to be self-directed, not
always willing to address controversial issues, and not always aware that their closely
held cultural assumptions might be hegemonic. So, what would be a good way to
introduce multicultural issues, both from the standpoint of a pluralistic, multicultural
student body and from the standpoint of multicultural competence for the global
marketplace? As mentioned previously, before we can get to best practices in
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multiculturalism in design education, we have to engage in some multicultralistic practices
and assess their efficacy.
Implications for Application to Multicultural Design Pedagogy
As mentioned previously (Cullen, 1998), design students are more multicultural
than they have been in the past. They are not mostly male (as they have been in the
past), nor are their aesthetics, sensibilities, cultural affinities, or choices, what they were
in the past. Design educators have certainly noticed, according to the study, that there are
international students in their classrooms now, and many have addressed the needs of
non-native speakers by expanding the visual materials used to support their classes. The
domestic students from marginalized populations, however, seem to be invisible to most
post-secondary design instructors.
Creating an inclusive learning environment is difficult, says Tisdell. It does seem
that educators interest[ed] in doing so might want to give themselves permission to try
new things and to make mistakes along the way (p. 89). What kind of classroom
activities, tactics, as MP calls them, might work in a design classroom to increase
multicultural competence for future practices, to facilitate the learning of multicultural
students in the post-secondary design classroom, and to heighten the awareness of
multicultural issues in the design student body so they can participate in practices that
employ a wide range of designers and that design for a wide range of clients? How can we
really learn from each other (hooks, 1994, Braaten & Williams, 1997)?
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How can inclusive strategies tap the talents of all the students in a design
classroom? Allowing students to choose the method of exploration of contemporary
issues would be a way to encourage more meaning-making for these students. For
instance, if the practice of a type of design demands that physical accessibility be
addressed in the built environment (ADA compliance), perhaps the student could develop
the client profile in such a way that ADA compliance could be employed. Each student
would have the option, then, to develop a client profile that matches her/his own
interests, and the sharing of the profiles has the potential to expand the awareness of the
rest of the students. Perhaps an elder parent is moving in and requires ramps and
bathrooms that are wheelchair accessible. Or perhaps a couple is preparing for their
retired years, or perhaps a child has been injured in an automobile or sports accident.
Each of those circumstances would require adjustment to the design and research to find
appropriate solutions
Who are those who practice design today who represent the non-dominant
culture? In the last five years some trade journals such as Communication Arts, How,
International Design, and Interior Design, to name a few, have included designer profiles
from practices that include designers who are not part of the traditionally dominant
culture and are a recommended resource (Appendix III). In other contemporary
resources, however, examples of design practioners of some marginalized populations are
conspicuously absent. The instructor can use examples of design practitioners from
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marginalized populations, thus broadening the awareness of all the students in a design
classroom that practices today are indeed broadly pluralistic. This requires some extra
time to search out resources on the instructors part because much published material is
multiculturally non-inclusive.
Neilsen and Stambaugh (1998) suggest that many of our students enter the
classroom believing that culturally based differences are problems to be solved or managed
rather than assets to be cultivated and put to good use (p. 5). Students should be
encouraged to appreciate both biographical and experiential material offered by other
students. hooks (1994) posits that there must be an ongoing recognition that everyone
influences the classroom dynamic, that everyone contributes. These contributions are
resources (p. 8).
In a design classroom, where critique of projects is the norm, self-critique holds
some possibilities for exploring many others experience with the same design problem, as
listed in Appendix III. Developing a required verbal self-critique gives agency and voice
to each student in turn and heightens awareness of various good design solutions from
many quarters. In my experience with this strategy, students are each asked to speak
about how their design solution meets the specifications of the open-ended assignment,
which materials were employed and their assessment of those materials, why and what
particular part of this design solution is particularly useful or pleasing to the student, and
where they would make some alterations to the solution if they could. Student learn to
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develop an idea thoroughly, knowing they have to talk about it; they learn to be verbally
articulate about their solutions; and they learn to develop a critical eye about their work
that includes both the best part of it and the part that needs further consideration and
strengthening. Others in the classroom benefit from seeing and hearing about design
solutions other than their own, and they benefit from listening, watching closely, and
giving credence to others solutions. In another take on this technique, used by design
instructor JZ, after the verbal self-critique, the class is required to give written feedback to
each student in the group with both positive points and negative points listed. hooks
(1994) suggests that excitement is generated through collective effort, (p. 8) and while
the collective effort in this instance is in developing responses to the same design
problem, the sharing of the results broadens the students perception of possible solutions
and heightens evaluative processes. One of the study participants (FD) mentioned the
sharing of research results, and another participant (JZ) had previously discussed her
modification of the self-critique process as described above that I developed for use in my
own design classroom.
When the students undertake self-critique, it requires that the instructor give up
some of his/her power because the technique mandates that evaluation rests in the
individual. However, it gives the instructor much richer ground for lecture and comment
because students bring their own experiences and their own aesthetics that can be
elaborated upon. It is useful in this technique for the instructor to save negative critique
178
for a private, written form so that the public, verbal explorations by the students can be
safe, open, and comfortably risky.
The multicultural pressures from design practices do not yet seem to be at issue in
design education except at the conceptual stage, and perhaps wont be at issue until the
demand for those who are multiculturally competent is louder and more strident. Since
the Internet is the format within which websites, global marketing, and other
multiculturally sensitive marketing issues and demands lie, maybe the maturing of this
explosively growing communications tool will provide that impetus for more broadly
practiced multicultural competence. Indeed, there are some prescriptive pieces in
proceedings that hint at some possible inclusions into curricula, including cross-cultural
color sensitivity (Vanka, 1998), the Web of Culture website and subsequent links, among
others.
Most literature in multicultural education suggests group work and mentoring, as
listed in Appendix III. While team projects are often problematic in higher education due
to varied schedules and out of school demands faced by many students, they do simulate
the team atmosphere of many contemporary design practices. If the goal is to increase
multicultural competency, then the team members might be carefully selected to include
individuals from several countries, from several ethnicities, from several religions,
different sexual orientations, among other positionality issues. Other resources suggest
partnerships based on multicultural similarities and differences.
179
Nielsen and Stambaugh (1995) suggest using personal stories as a way to connect
the classroom members (Appendix III). In my own educational practice, Ive used
symbolic self-portraits, not only as a device to explore symbols and symbolic color, but
to tell a personal story. The visual/spatial information tells the personal story itself;
students in a class self-critique are asked to verbalize only the meanings of their icons and
symbolic color choices they feel comfortable sharing. Otherwise, the self-critique deals
with the visual/spatial specifications (radial symmetry, shape, space, visual circulation,
among others). Limitations to this technique are that the symbols and symbolic color are
implicit and not explicit. Of course, sharing of personal stories always encounters self-
editing, and so may or may not be revealing or connective in the way Neilsen and
Stambaugh intend.
Vanka (1998) has developed a cross-cultural color system for designers to be
accessed during several phases of the design process and focus group critique (Appendix
III). Design problems that explore other cultures or employ visual materials from many
cultures, such as the embassy assignment discussed previously, or one such as a CD
cover that combines the imagery of a large target audience such as the Pacific Rim or a
group of trading partners, are useful in developing multicultural competence. Images for
popular media, such as CD covers, also address such positionality issues as age,
educational level, socioeconomic class, ethnicity, among others. Research and critical
thinking are key components in these types of design assignments and should be required
180
to broaden the world-view of design students. In a work discussed in the literature, the
students were from five Native American reservations developed a program together
based on textile traditions. The question asked was appropriate: How and what can we
learn from each other? (Williams & Braaten, 1997, p. 1).
An immediate feedback loop would be a useful step for the situationally
responsive educator to assess whether the strategies implemented actually address the
difficulty as expressed by the students and as perceived by the instructor. Further,
faculty support groups would be most helpful, organized around subject matter, so that
instructors could share successful strategies with each other, to enrich and grow their own
practices, and to gain insight from each other. Thus, the feedback loop would grow from
the small circle of instructor and students to the larger circle of instructors and students,
deepening the reflective possibilities, the transformative possibilities, and mutual support
for each.
Todays design practice has the potential to serve both the traditional and a
contemporary clientele, created by the ease with which we can communicate with each
other across the globe. With this ease comes difficult issues. Many multinational firms are
represented wherever the population can financially support that company shop the
Gap around the world. Some say that the result of such access is the Disneyfication
of the world (Burkman, 2000). Tisdell (1995) mentions continually shifting personal
positionalities, but I suggest that global positionalities are shifting dynamically as well.
181
Cullen (1998) writes that the biggest challenge to design today is internationalism, which
she defines as an understanding of different cultures and how to work with others. If our
students have not been introduced to the tools to become multiculturally competent
(Appendix III), they will not be hired to perform jobs that require multicultural
competence. Perhaps the better questions is, which design jobs in the next several
decades will NOT require multicultural competence?
Addressing multiculturalism in design classrooms requires that instructors seek
out materials and methods that address the multiple positionalities of both clients and
students, to both facilitate the students in design classrooms and to prepare those
students for the practices that they will encounter. It requires that instructors
acknowledge that their educations and their practices might be limited, and that their
practices are not those that their students will encounter. It requires that multicultural
designers be used for examples in the classroom rather than only those from the dominant
culture in the United States. It requires that design history and art history are about more
than those traditionally studied in the dominant culture. It requires that question and
answer formats do not favor those from the dominant culture and that tactics be used that
give each student voice and agency. It requires that positive student examples be from
more than the dominant culture. It requires that design instructors change if they are truly
to be multicultural educators.
182
At the administrative level, multiculturalism asks that faculty find avenues of
support and exchange, and that such exchanges are regular and open. It asks that all
facilities of an educational institution, including student services, housing, registration,
finance, all be trained and coordinated in an effort to maximize the potential of all students
and indeed, all the staff.
As a result of this study and discussion of the findings, a preliminary checklist of
multicultural strategies for the design educator, administrator, and practitioner has been
developed in Appendix III. This checklist includes the examination of assumptions of
positionality of the students and the educator, heightening the awareness and developing
strategies that include multicultural issues. It also includes suggestions for multicultural
administrative policy as well as classroom pedagogy and multicultural content.
183
Areas for Future Study
There are many areas for possible future multicultural design educational research.
An area worth some discussion, noted by the interrator, is that designers and design
educators are responsive by nature and by profession; they are by definition solving
visual/spatial problem- solvers on behalf of a client. They are visual and spatial trouble-
shooters. A proactive stance for multiculturalism in design, unless you have been a part
of a marginalized group in some way, is somewhat unusual. So the study seems to
indicate that unless an educator is sensitized to issues of marginalization due to previous
experiences, s/he may not be aware enough of multicultural issues or of inclusivity issues
to employ them in the classroom. This interpretation may or may not have validity upon
closer scrutiny and seems worth pursuing on its own. Thus, a design instructor may see
her/himself as responsive and sensitive to students' needs without understanding that
some of the things done in the classroom may be supporting the hidden agenda and the
status quo, and may be inhibiting the maximizing of the students potential.
Would role playing sensitize design instructors to multicultural issues, to
anothers issue of the first emergency (Pagenhart, 1994)? If it is a valid assumption
that previous personal experience with marginalization is a trigger for sensitivity to the
issue of multiculturalism and for proactivity around the issue of multiculturalism in the
design classroom, then how can a design instructor be sensitized to issues of
multiculturalism if an instructor represents the dominant culture? Could role playing in
184
faculty development be key to such sensitization? Collins (1991) discusses similarities
and differences of positionality in student populations, explaining that one may be an
insider in a group in some connective ways, and an outsider in the same group in other
ways. Could this insider/outsider experience, which is a common human condition, be
used as a device to increase sensitivity to multicultural and positionality issues in design
classrooms? Could the exploration of insider/outsider status be a useful tool to increase a
design instructors awareness of the need for tactics of inclusivity in the design classroom
and for multicultural competence for the potential design professional? These suggestions
are listed in Appendix III.
The students perspective has not been explored in this study, and is a likely
candidate for future study. Do multicultural issues affect a students success and
attachment to their program? If so, which issues of the shifting multicultural matrix most
affect a design students success or lack of it? Does a shift in positionality, such as aging
(or maturing) or losing a job and encountering an economic downturn during an
educational program, affect success?
More inclusive work in design history and in art history should be undertaken and
formalized in published form so that students learn from examples of designers from other
than the Eurocentric culture. Just as the emphasis in undergraduate education has changed
from Western Civilization to World Civilization, so should the emphasis in design history
and art history take a more global view.
185
More work in planning for change and strategies for scenario planning following
the work of Van Wieringen (1999) should be undertaken for design education so that the
time lapse between the dynamic changes in practice and the response in design education
is shortened. If that time lapse is more than two years, then students in six- and eight-
quarter programs are being prepared for practices that have drastically changed.
Former graduates of institutions of design education are an asset and should be
contacted for many more reasons than for fund raising. Should those former graduates be
surveyed at two and five year intervals to create a feedback loop to assess the efficacy of
their design education? Can institutions of design education be a forum for continuing
professional design education, and partner with professional organizations which require
continuing education credits to remain licensed? Should former graduates be encouraged
to return to upgrade their education? A part of that upgrade might be multicultural
competency in the marketplace.
More investigations across design disciplines should be focussed on hidden
agendas in design education and how students in the broadest multicultural categories can
have better access to design education, following up on the work of Demmitt (1988) and
Groat and Ahrentzen (1996, 1997). Are the classroom materials and texts an instructor
employs suitable for visual/spatial learners as well as more traditional learners? Is the
vocabulary employed inclusive? Are the images and examples and practitioners referred
to from multicultural resources? Which classroom behaviors do instructors employ that
186
benefit the status quo? Which train students for practices as they no longer exist? Which
train students for practices as they might be in the future?
How widespread are multicultural post-secondary design education practices?
Are there some design schools and professions that are more or less inclusive to
multicultural students? Are there some design schools and professions that are more or
less sensitive to the multicultural needs of the contemporary practice? Are there cultural
assumptions of instructors, of the curriculum, and of the educational institution that block
a design students success, and if so, which are they? What specific kinds of multicultural
competency could be added to design curriculum and to design pedagogy?
If faculty undertake multicultural strategies, what kind of personal and
professional risk are they taking and what is the threshold for such risk taking? Must
awareness be heightened at the administrative level before faculty are safe to engage in
multicultural practices that reach beyond responsiveness?
What kind of multicultural training should be included for staff at an educational
institution, including student services, finance, student housing, registration, admission,
among others, so that each staff member is aware of their own multicultural matrix and
that of the students? How broad should the multicultural umbrella be? For instance,
should that include the issues of positionality as defined by Tisdell, or should it be
expanded to include issues such as learning styles or other issues of world view? How
187
can the staffs own multicultural filters affect student success? How could training be
implemented, measures constructed, and support be continuous?
How can faculty share inclusive and multicultural strategies that seem to work in
the design classroom? What forum can be developed so that faculty can be mutually
supportive in developing multicultural materials, resources, and strategies? How can
faculty discuss with each other how the digital revolution impacts design practice and the
design classroom? What role will the Internet play in multicultural competency and in the
demand for design practitioners who are multiculturally competent?
Once multiculturalism makes its way into design classrooms with some regularity,
then some assessment and more recommendations for efficacy of approach and strategy
might be undertaken to inform design education as a whole.
These are just a few of the issues raised by design education and the multicultural
matrix. The work has just begun.
Conclusion
Design as a discipline is just becoming self-conscious and self-reflective. It has
been slow to recover from Eurocentric philosophies that suggested that those of the
dominant culture in the United States were the sole stakeholders in the practice of design
and in design education. As contemporary society has changed and a more pluralistic
middle class has emerged, students from marginalized populations have come to occupy
post-secondary design classrooms. At the same time, technology has revolutionized
188
global communication, and the demands from that global marketplace require a more
multiculturally savvy design practitioner. Within the classroom, the multicultural
incentive drives (a) maximizing the potential of all design students, including those of
marginalized populations, while they are in the classroom, and (b) heightening the
sensitivity of all students to each others multicultural issues. Pressure from the world of
practice indicates that the global nature of contemporary design practices demands that
those who enter practice be multiculturally competent to deal with the demands of those
practices. Hence, design education must not only find ways to be inclusive and maximize
the potential of all students in the design classroom, but also to address multicultural
competency so that all students in design classrooms have a means to explore the needs of
their future global clients. This study, however, indicates that the impulse from the world
of practice has yet to make its mark on the classroom, and that the instructors
interviewed had not yet perceived this need. These twin dynamics, from the marketplace
for which design practices exist, and from the design students who train for professional
design practices, pressure design education to respond. How do we as design educators
see that method and content presented in design classrooms are responsive to the needs of
all our students, not only in terms of different styles of learning, but in terms of
sociocultural inclusivity of every sort, and prepare those students for contemporary
design practices?
189
In taking the first steps toward devising multicultural strategies for the post-
secondary design classroom, this descriptive, qualitative study, within a constructivist
theoretical framework, was undertaken. A semi-structured interviewing strategy targeted
a group of six experienced post-secondary design educators, all of whom self-identified as
using multicultural methodology or content in their classes. The data, comprised of
carefully transcribed interviews and artifacts, have been analyzed for coding and
commonality of theme as the interviews progressed. The validity of the analysis was a
thorough and systematic methodology, including an interrators analysis, with constant
comparative analysis of material, member checks, triangulation, and synthesis of findings.
The data revealed that the approaches to multiculturalism in post secondary
design education could be categorized into three sections. In the first of these, the
instructors set the sociocultural agenda and addressed multicultural issues by embedding
them in the course content. These instructors were risk-takers who were willing to
introduce students to controversial issues in their efforts to prepare them for
contemporary practices. In the second category, the instructors were responsive to
student needs and focused on maximizing student potential. Instructors in the second
group addressed multiculturalism and positionality through a situationally responsive
design pedagogy in which the instructor responded to the needs of the changing student
body and to particular student needs in each class, modifying the delivery of materials and
the materials themselves to suit the students in the class. The third category combined the
190
previous two methods: the instructors both set the sociocultural agenda by embedding
multicultural issues in the content of their courses so that students had to confront issues
of multiculturalism and positionality, while at the same time were responsive to the
individual needs of the students, and in responding to those needs, developed materials to
aid in that response. Both the second and third groups retained the newly developed
materials as a foundation upon which to build new materials. Instructors in the first and
third groups were risk-takers who were willing to introduce controversial issues of an
environmental, multicultural, and social nature in order to prepare students for their future
practices.
New media was used in all the groups as a tool to support and accelerate
traditional skills and as a tool of research, but not as a marketing tool or as a tool to create
a design community across the global marketplace. International students were the first,
and sometimes the only, stakeholders identified as multicultural by instructors in the
study. Domestic students of marginalized populations were identified as having
multicultural issues by only a few of the instructor/participants in the study. Some
instructors saw multicultural methods and content as having the potential to heighten the
multicultural awareness in all their design students.
Multicultural seeds are beginning to grow in post-secondary design classrooms.
The requirements of the marketplace may be the impetus that fractures the hegemonic
tendencies in design education: that the content in and method by which the instructors
191
and administrators learned should be replicated for their students. Educators hear from
professionals that the traditional hand-wrist skills are needed, that the ideation and critical
thinking found in design process are mandatory in todays practice, and indeed they are.
However, the methods by which they are taught, the students to whom they are taught,
and the marketplace for which they are taught all these have changed and are continuing
to change dramatically. Traditional skills do not have to be acquired by traditional
methods. Traditional mass markets do not define contemporary target markets.
Traditional assumptions are no longer relevant in our contemporary society. It is
incumbent upon the current design practitioner and design educator to devise a framework
that allows professional design education to respond to a constantly changing global
marketplace and devise a methodology that is inclusive and multiculturally competent
while promulgating expertise in new tools, traditional skills, and critical thinking.
The design educator makes a lasting impact on contemporary society, and with
that impact comes both responsibility and delight. Students from design classrooms go
on to practice in fields that penetrate every layer of contemporary global society. It is
incumbent upon each design educator to critically examine her/his own multicultural
matrix on a continuing basis, to use that transforming examination to more rigorously
maximize the potential and heighten multicultural awareness of all of her/his students in
pedagogy and methodology, and finally, to thoroughly prepare those students for
multicultural design practices in the global marketplace. It is the nature of the
192
multicultural matrix to accommodate shifts, to be open in its constructs to change and
reexamination. The nature of global design practices requires design and design education
to partner in this continuing transformation and to act upon its revelations.
193
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APPENDIX I: Questionnaire
Please complete any and /or all questions.
Name: (identities will remain confidential)
Contact Number for possible follow-up:
Id love to help you with your study, Buff, but I dont have time to write out my
answers. How about a phone interview?
Im available at this number _____________________________ on this
day__________________ at this time _______________________.
1. How would you, as an experienced design educator, define
a. Multiculturalism?
b. Social responsibility?
c. Design educations place in todays society?
2. How are your teaching philosophies and beliefs enacted in the classroom?
3. How do you develop materials and methods that deal with ethnicities, sexual
orientations, dis/abilities that are not your own but may be those of the student body
or marketplace?
4. How do you develop materials and methods that deal with a dynamically changing
marketplace?
5. How do you develop materials and methods that prepare design students for the
enormous potential of new media and the global market to which it exposes a
designers work?
6. Describe projects (and/or provide materials if possible) in which youve addressed
multiculturalism. What was the impact on your students in your estimation?
Please return with the signed consent form in the SASE included or fax both to: 206-842-3882.
Thank you for your participation in this study. I truly appreciate the time youve taken.
214
215
APPENDIX II-A: Inquiry Letter
Hungerland Studio
Rose Loop NE, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110
phone: fax: email:
November 16, 1999
, Faculty
Digital Media
Art Center College of Design
1700 Lida Street
Pasadena, CA 91103-1999
Dear Ms.:
Im working on a study investigating multiculturalism in design
education to complete my graduate degree at Antioch University-Seattle.
The study intends to examine the practices of experienced post secondary
design educators as those practices relate to methods of inclusivity of
pluralistic student bodies and their preparation of that student body
for global practices.
Design as a discipline is changing dramatically and so must design
education change as well. One of the most dynamic changes is the
inclusion of students from marginalized populations as well as
international students in design classrooms. It is imperative that
design educators adapt not only to the challenges of changing practices
and global markets, but to the changing student bodies as well.
Methodology needs to be developed that addresses inclusivity on one hand
and globalism on the other so that students are prepared not for
practices as they once existed and markets that are no longer viable,
but for current practices in a global marketplace.
What is included in the term multiculturalism in design education? That
can mean
methods that deliberately encourage each voice to be heard equally
in the classroom,
materials and information disseminated in class that represent
design practices of other than the dominant culture in the U.S.
global market oriented materials disseminated in class or in class
projects
projects or assignments that require research and discussion of
design in other cultures than the dominant in the U.S. or Western
Europe
deliberate mentoring of international students or of domestic
students from traditionally marginalized populations.
The questions and consent form are included. If your educational
practice is one that includes multiculturalism please complete the
questionnaire and consent forms and return them by fax or by mail in the
stamped envelope enclosed. If you know of a colleague whose educational
practice touches on such material, please do not hesitate to copy it or
to encourage her/him to e-mail me at hungerland@msn.com. A message can
also be left at my faculty voicemail at The Art Institute of Seattle:
206.448.0900, ext. 362.
Please dont forget to sign the consent form and return it with your
questionnaire, so that I can include your contribution in the study.
The more we, as experienced design educators, share our educational
practices with each other, the more strength we have as a committed
community, and the broader our influence on the practices of future
designers.
216
Thank you very much for your interest, your time, and your contribution.
Cordially,
Elizabeth C. (Buff) Hungerland
Appendix II-B: Email solicitation
Hi. Please do not be put off by the length of this e-mail. Im completing my graduate
degree at Antioch University with a research project on post-secondary Design
Education. I teach foundation skills across all design disciplines (as well as other
classes) at The Art Institute of Seattle. I hope youll take the time to participate in
my study so that we, as design educators, can learn from each other and enrich design
education. Thank you very much for your participation. Buff Hungerland
Purpose of Research:
The purpose of this study is to identify the strategies of experienced post secondary design
educators who address the multicultural nature of their student bodies in their design classrooms, and who
prepare students for the multicultural and globalistic nature of contemporary design practices. Design as a
discipline is changing dramatically and so must design education, which prepares students for professional
practices, change as well. One of the most dynamic changes is the inclusion of students from marginalized
populations as well as international students in design classrooms. It is imperative that design educators
adapt not only to the challenges of changing practices and global markets, but to the changing student
bodies as well. Methodology needs to be developed that addresses inclusivity on one hand and globalism
on the other so that students are not prepared for practices as they once existed and markets that are no
longer viable, but for current practices in a global marketplace. I expect to learn about pedagogical
methodology and strategies to address this changing paradigm in design education.
Please respond to any or all of the questions below:
A consent form follows. Please sign with a virtual signature (typed, script font, or
initials). Thanks very much.
1. How would you, as an experienced design educator, define
a. Multiculturalism?
b. Social responsibility?
c. Design educations place in todays society?
2. How are your teaching philosophies and beliefs enacted in the classroom?
3. How do you develop materials and methods that deal with ethnicities, sexual
orientations, dis/abilities that are not your own but may be those of the student body or
marketplace?
217
4. How do you develop materials and methods that deal with a dynamically changing
marketplace?
5. How do you develop materials and methods that prepare design students for the
enormous potential of new media and the global market to which it exposes a designers
work?
218
APPENDIX III
MULTICULTURAL STRATEGIES
for increasing sensitivity to issues of multiculturalism in design educators (and staff)
for facilitating multicultural student success and
for increasing multicultural competence in the design classroom and in future design practices
Increasing multicultural sensitivity/responsiveness of the design educator (and staff)
Exploration of insider/outsider positionality
Exploration of hidden agenda and other blocks teachers (and staff) unconsciously place in the way
of students learning
Role playing to increase sensitivity
Learning style typing and exploration of the relationship of the style of the instructor to the style
of the students
Myers-Briggs Personality or Kiersey-Bates Preference sorters
Benefits:
Awareness of sociocultural issues of multiculturalism
Awareness of issues of the hidden agenda
Improving the approach to multicultural issues in the post-secondary design classroom
Use of examples of good design from the non-dominant culture and from global practices
Use of historical examples from the non-dominant culture and from other countries
Facilitation of individual oral, written, and visual/spatial voice and agency
Self-critique
Shared critique
Framing the design problem to include students choice of social issues as well as design
solutions
Inclusion of a research component in design problems to expose students not only to research
techniques but to a broad array of possibilities
Mixed group work to facilitate exposure to others points of view, aesthetic decision and meaning
making, and team dynamics
Mentoring and pairing of students
Inclusion of personal stories
Sharing and discussion of design solutions
Oral and visual presentations of research, design process, and final solution
Exploration of how much all in the classroom can learn from each other
Benefits
Facilitates learning for all students, including those of marginalized populations and
international students
Heightens awareness of multicultural issues among all students
Introduction of multicultural competence into the curriculum
Exploration of cross-cultural meanings associated with
Color
Symbol
Word
Exploration of the need for multicultural competence in global markets and micro markets
Benefits:
Comfort with the issues of multicultural competence
219
Inclusion of those issues of multicultural competence in the design process and in professional
practice in general.
Acknowledgement
No work of this length is completed without the efforts of many people, who were not
only part of its critique, but were early editors and offered encouragement. Im humbled
by their efforts and grateful for their support.
The members of my graduate committee:
Jim Borgford-Parnell, MA, Associate Faculty, Advisor, Antioch University-
Seattle
Lee Karlovic, Ph.D., Lecturer, Woodring College of Education, Western
Washington University
Jan Rogan, Assistant Dean of Education, The Art Institute of Seattle
The participants in the study who took time from their busy lives to talk with me and
offer their insights and express their interest.
and
Christopher Leet Hungerland, RA, M. Arch., my husband, first reader, and best friend
Elizabeth Tisdell, Ph.D., formerly Core Faculty, Adult Education, Antioch
University-Seattle (now at National Lewis University) and Edward Taylor, Ph.D.,
Advisor, formerly Core Faculty, Adult Education, Antioch University-Seattle, (now
at Pennsylvania State University) for setting me on this path.
220
Dan Lafferty, Dean of Education, The Art Institute of Seattle, for his interest and
encouragement.
On design education:
A crucial element of critical pedagogy is the recognition, not
the dismissal of students social experiences and cultural
affiliations, which serve as lenses through which they experience
the world and are a reflection of the audiences we attempt to
reach. This awareness means the classroom represents the
intersection of different voices, many of which are absent from
221
most programs and educational philosophies as well from many
successful design offices.
Blauvelt and Davis (1997, p. 80)

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