Abstract
Traditional and currently-prevalent pedagogies of design perpetuate ableist and exclusionary notions of what it means to be a designer. In this paper, we trace such historically exclusionary norms of design education, and highlight modern-day instances from our own experiences as design educators in such epistemologies. Towards imagining a more inclusive and sustainable future of design education, we present three case studies from our own experience as design educators in redesigning course experiences for blind and low-vision (BLV), deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students, and students with other disabilities. In documenting successful and unsuccessful practices, we imagine what a pedagogy of care in design education would look like.
Keywords
design education; ableist education; inclusive education; pedagogy of care
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.1070
Citation
Ghosh, S., and Coppola, S. (2024) This Class Isn’t Designed For Me: Recognizing Ableist Trends In Design Education, And Redesigning For An Inclusive And Sustainable Future, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.1070
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
This Class Isn’t Designed For Me: Recognizing Ableist Trends In Design Education, And Redesigning For An Inclusive And Sustainable Future
Traditional and currently-prevalent pedagogies of design perpetuate ableist and exclusionary notions of what it means to be a designer. In this paper, we trace such historically exclusionary norms of design education, and highlight modern-day instances from our own experiences as design educators in such epistemologies. Towards imagining a more inclusive and sustainable future of design education, we present three case studies from our own experience as design educators in redesigning course experiences for blind and low-vision (BLV), deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students, and students with other disabilities. In documenting successful and unsuccessful practices, we imagine what a pedagogy of care in design education would look like.