Abstract
This paper explores conceptions of teaching held by academics in departments of design and explores links between those conceptions and the communities of practice associated with the subject context. This paper explores the qualitatively different ways that teachers of design experience their teaching. The study focuses on teachers of practice based subjects in design. Much of the work which has examined teachers’ conceptions built on research frameworks that also explored students conceptions and approaches to learning. Studies of conceptions of teaching have ranged from the phenomenographic (e.g. Martin and Balla, 1991; Prosser et al 1994) to those studies of belief orientations (e.g. Fox, 1983; Kember, 1997). The data is from an interview study of 18 teachers from eight UK Universities and is explored with a phenomenographic approach (Marton and Booth, 1997). The analysis identified the qualitatively different ways teachers of design experience their teaching within which variation in the practice dimensions could also be discerned. This paper reports variation between the qualitatively different ways the teachers conceive of teaching. The important feature of this analysis is the community of practice dimension, in particular how teaching is perceived as contributing to engaging with the social practices which constitute the particular design practice (Billett, 2001).
Citation
Drew, L. (2004) Variation in the Experience of Teaching Design: the Community of Practice Dimension., in Redmond, J., Durling, D. and de Bono, A (eds.), Futureground - DRS International Conference 2004, 17-21 November, Melbourne, Australia. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2004/researchpapers/188
Variation in the Experience of Teaching Design: the Community of Practice Dimension.
This paper explores conceptions of teaching held by academics in departments of design and explores links between those conceptions and the communities of practice associated with the subject context. This paper explores the qualitatively different ways that teachers of design experience their teaching. The study focuses on teachers of practice based subjects in design. Much of the work which has examined teachers’ conceptions built on research frameworks that also explored students conceptions and approaches to learning. Studies of conceptions of teaching have ranged from the phenomenographic (e.g. Martin and Balla, 1991; Prosser et al 1994) to those studies of belief orientations (e.g. Fox, 1983; Kember, 1997). The data is from an interview study of 18 teachers from eight UK Universities and is explored with a phenomenographic approach (Marton and Booth, 1997). The analysis identified the qualitatively different ways teachers of design experience their teaching within which variation in the practice dimensions could also be discerned. This paper reports variation between the qualitatively different ways the teachers conceive of teaching. The important feature of this analysis is the community of practice dimension, in particular how teaching is perceived as contributing to engaging with the social practices which constitute the particular design practice (Billett, 2001).