Abstract
Design practitioners and educators play an important role in advancing inclusive societies. However, the impact of educational initiatives aimed at cultivating inclusive thinking and behaviour among designers remains underexamined. We address this gap by reporting phase 1 of a scale-development study to measure inclusive mindset, knowledge, and behaviour in design and engineering education. Building on the Inclusive Mindset Model, the study operationalises inclusivity into three scales and presents the initial item pool developed through item generation and content validation. Following established scale-development procedures, items were refined through feedback from six expert judges and eight engineering students, resulting in an initial pool of 95 items across the three scales. By positioning inclusivity as an assessable dimension, this work contributes to plural, multidimensional approaches to design impact assessment. This preliminary study provides a foundation for future psychometric validation and offers new possibilities for reflective learning and curriculum evaluation in design education.
Keywords
Inclusive Mindset Scale, Educational Measurement, Inclusive Design, Reflective Design Practice
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2423
Citation
Tongkaew, A., Lomberg, C., Valgeirsdóttir, D., and Funk, M. (2026) From Mindset to Measurement: Developing Scales for Inclusive and Reflective Design Practice, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2423
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
From Mindset to Measurement: Developing Scales for Inclusive and Reflective Design Practice
Design practitioners and educators play an important role in advancing inclusive societies. However, the impact of educational initiatives aimed at cultivating inclusive thinking and behaviour among designers remains underexamined. We address this gap by reporting phase 1 of a scale-development study to measure inclusive mindset, knowledge, and behaviour in design and engineering education. Building on the Inclusive Mindset Model, the study operationalises inclusivity into three scales and presents the initial item pool developed through item generation and content validation. Following established scale-development procedures, items were refined through feedback from six expert judges and eight engineering students, resulting in an initial pool of 95 items across the three scales. By positioning inclusivity as an assessable dimension, this work contributes to plural, multidimensional approaches to design impact assessment. This preliminary study provides a foundation for future psychometric validation and offers new possibilities for reflective learning and curriculum evaluation in design education.