06
PEDAGOGIA DEL DISSENY,
1991
Environmental design education in schoolsDesign education
Design education in schools has
been a focus for argument and debate in the UK for over twenty years. The
inclusion of design technology in the National Curriculum has given fresh
impetus to this and has brought to the surface many issues that are still
unresolved. It was initially developed as a means of changing the practice of
craft teachers (woodwork and metalwork) in secondary schools. In the past,
design education in secondary schools has tended to be identified with craft
and technology, and in UK
schools at least has concentrated on product design, focusing primarily on an
exploration of materials and concentrating on production methods. In primary
schools, science and technology has subsumed much of what we might recognise as
design studies, often equated with «problem-solving». In the National
Curriculum, which has recently been introduced, design has been identified both
as a «foundation» subject and as a cross-curricular concern for all pupils aged
5-16. Three areas of study are specified: artefacts; systems; and environments.
The overall objective, described in
the report Design and Technology for ages 5 to 16,1 is the development of design and
technological capability, defined as «the capability to operate effectively and
creatively in the made world». This is to be welcomed, stressing as it does the
active nature of design studies. The report also states that the capability to
investigate, design, make and appraise is as important as the acquisition of
other types of knowledge. It might be useful to think of design as the
translation of thought into action. However, teachers are not always clear
about what is meant by «design». Bruce Archer offers a comprehensive
definition:
Design is that area of human
experience, skill and knowledge that reflects man's concern with the
appreciation and adaptation of his surroundings in the light of his material
and spiritual needs. In particular, it relates to configuration, composition,
meaning, value and purpose in man-made phenomena.2
Environmental
design
In environmental design, experience
of work in schools suggests the need for four distinct, but related, areas of
study: aesthetic and design awareness; a feeling response to place: analytical
and critical study; design activity. The work has been influenced by a growing
interest in environmental concerns and the development of critical studies.
Much of the work has been spearheaded by art teachers, who have been able to
develop a new approach to architecture of townscape studies, and geography
teachers, who have promoted planning studies. This paper draws primarily on the
experience of art teachers and primary teachers who have developed art-based
approaches, linking design and environmental concerns. Architecture studies in
schools have traditionally been offered to a minority of pupils as an option
within an art history course. The situation is now changing and there have been
attempts to extend the notion of design and environmental education to encompass
a much broader definition of architecture. A new consciousness about
environmental quality has revealed that need to encourage a wider engagement in
environmental concerns. Early efforts were influenced by the involvement of
architects and planners in a working partnership with teachers. Two projects
are of particular importance here: the «Front Door» Project at Pimlico School
(1974-76) in London
and the Schools Council national curriculum development project, «Art and the
Built Environment» (1976-82).
«Front door»
The «Front Door» Project brought
together teachers and architects in a working partnership to develop a course
of architecture and design studies based on an investigation of the local area.
It was set up in response to the interim findings of the Royal College of Art
study Design in General Education (1973), which revealed that design
education in schools was confined to product and graphic design. This pilot
scheme identified some of the possibilities of environmental design studies and
demonstrated the value of interprofessional collaboration as a means of
curriculum development. The pupils also had an important contribution to make
—their detailed knowledge of the local area. Over a two year period, a
framework for a programme of study was developed which spanned the seven years
of secondary schooling. This was incorporated in art, design, community
education and liberal studies courses.
The problem the «Front Door» team
set themselves was to find the best ways of engaging pupils of varying ages in
an investigation of architecture and design, using the local neighbourhood as a
focus and using art as a means of study. For eleven year olds, the work
included consideration of the changing neighbourhood, places where people
lived, worked or played. Twelve year olds studied shape, colour, pattern and
texture, one group developing a study of decoration based on natural form.
Thirteen year olds made a study of shops as a kind of «soft» architecture, more
liable to change than other bits of the built environment. This theme was
echoed in slide programmes made by fourteen year olds, who explored the notion
of shopkeepers as designers. Other themes were provision for play, words in
town, transport and housing. For the older pupils, much of the observation and
analytical work provided opportunities for valuable research necessary for
their art examinations. They created collections of sketches, observational
drawings and photographs from which they developed paintings, drawings and
collages of subjects as diverse as street furniture, market stalls, power
stations and gasholders.
«Art and the built
environment»
Where the «Front Door» Project had
concentrated on raising levels of visual awareness and emotional response, the
«Art and the Built Environment» Project developed the work further into
critical study and design activity. It aims were
to enlarge students’ environmental
perception and enable them to develop a feel for the built environment; and to
enhance their capacity for discrimination and their competence in critical
appraisal.3
Although originally intented for
the 16-19 age group, it was soon apparent that the ideas and study methods were
relevant for all pupils. Work was developed first through a number of trial
schools, then through an extensive series of in-service courses leading to the
establishment of curriculum development working parties all over the country.
Art teachers from secondary schools, primary teachers, architects and planners
worked together to develop courses of study and programmes of work in schools.
The work was evaluated, documented and finally disseminated through a range of
publications.
A very important theme to emerge
from the «Art and the Built Environment Project was that of space and spatial
quality. Many pupils were used to thinking of architecture in terms of
buildings rather than the interrelationships between structures, spaces and
people. Study methods were developed to help pupils consider the nature of
space and to evaluate spatial quality. How is space contained, how is it
divided? How is it used or abused? How do we affect it and how does it affect
us? There was an emphasis on die development of an aesthetic and design
vocabulary to describe and qualify experience of townscape.
The «Art and the Built Environment»
Project created a groundswell of interest in townscape studies and provided a national
focus for curriculum development. It ideas and study methods have been adopted
by teachers in a variety of subject areas. Its philosophy and methodology have
influenced teacher education, providing a basis for further development of the
work in schools. Environmental design studies cut across subject boundaries,
covering three areas of the curriculum: art education, environmental
education and design education.
Art education
In the context of environmental
design studies, art-based study is concerned with exploring our relationship
with the environment, a dynamic relationship of varying perceptions, open to
change and modification with further experience and new learning. It is a
creative act, reworking experience in order to understand it. Environmental
perception involves highly complex acts of scanning, observing, defining,
redefining, analysing, categorising, comparing, establishing relationships and
creating meaning. Art teachers have always sought to develop aesthetic and
design awareness in the most general sense. Young people need to develop
fluency with the language of form, line, colour, texture, shape and spatial
relationships if they are to have an insight into an appreciation of the made
world. However, art education is not concerned merely with extending visual
acuity, but with relating this to the development of cognitive skills of
analysis, intepretation and comprehension.
Art-based study also encourages a
subjective, affective response to place. A place is part of the environment
which has been claimed by feelings. Art-based approaches enable the individual
to resolve and realise feelings about people and places, to form a personal
viewpoint and take an individual stance on environmental and design issues.
Messages are conveyed to us not only through words, but through the visual
language of signs and symbols, by the form and arrangement of buildings and
objects, which communicate a wide range of meanings and encourage certain
responses from us. Townscape forms express particular historical and cultural
values and relationships, which affect our perception of places. Environmental
design studies are concerned not only with the physical environment, but with the
meanings and ideas conveyed by particular townscapes.
Environmental
education
Environmental education is not only
about raising levels of awareness or increasing knowledge and understanding
about environmental matters. It is about the attitudes and values we develop
individually and corporately towards the environment. It should involve not
only a knowledge of the physical world, but be concerned about how people feel
about their environment, how they relate to
it, how they are affected by it
and how they affect it. This has been a view held by Her Majesty’s
Inspectorate:
Unesco has slated that one of the
goals of environmental education is «to provide every person with the
opportunities to acquire the knowledge, values, attitudes, commitment and
skills needed to project and improve the environment». By the age of sixteen,
pupils might reasonably be expected to view their surroundings with an eye both
appreciative and critical: show developing attitudes of concern towards their
environment and the environment of others; insofar as environmental issues are
concerned, have a basis on which to develop the ability to make informed
decisions affecting themselves and society —and the interest to do so.4
The exercise of critical skills is
of fundamental importance in environmental design studies. Criticism implies a recognition
of the criteria or values we bring to bear on the judgements we form. Eliot
Eisner regards «connoisseurship» as an appreciative art, drawing on the critic’s
armoury of skills —sizing up, summing up, taking stock, commenting, examining,
pondering, evaluating, investigating, considering, appraising, elucidating,
interpreting, appreciating, discriminating and classifying.
Appreciation in this context means
not necessarily a liking or preference for what one has encountered, but rather
an awareness of its qualities, the relations among its qualities and a
comprehension of the other states and values against which the presently
encountered state can be compared and contrasted.5
He conceives criticism as a process aimed at revealing the characteristics and qualities that constitute any human product. Experience, previous experience, memory, knowledge and discrimination are identified as key elements in developing the capacity for criticism. Critical study is an important aspect of environmental design studies. In environmental design pupils will
rarely be involved in creating a totally new environment, but will need to
appraise what already exists, explore needs and devise ways of organising and
achieving change. In pursuing their ideas, they will develop their sense of
historical and cultural continuity and a recognition that the new has to grow
out of the old.6
Design education
A critical study may throw up the
need for improvement or opportunity for change. A key concept central to design
education is that of dealing with change.
Design is essentially speculative
and propositional. It is about the future. All its methods and procedures are
directed towards deciding how places, products and images will be. In this
respect, it is highly unusual in a curriculum dealing primarily with the past
and what we already know. Design is not only knowing about the future; it is
about imagining it, shaping it and bringing it about. This needs to be
emphasised and made real in learning (Ken Baynes).7
This is attempted through providing pupils with the experience of design activity. Although design education draws on other disciplines in the investigations and critical study which form the necessary basis for the work, the activity of designing is a key aspect of design education. Central to this is the notion of cognitive modelling, which requires the exercise of the imagination. Whereas the exercise of the imagination is generally seen in terms of romantic escapism from the harsh realities of life, teachers involved in design education view it as a means of coming to grips with reality, of creating new and better realities, David Thistlewood explains: The individual [designer] needs to
be able to externalise his or her imaginings and make them real. From the
earliest times this has been effected through drawing, a kind of drawing that
is immediately responsive to the promptings of the imagination, and that
apprehends and clarifies ideas in the process of refinement. The term «to image»
describes this vividly, and imaging —a type of cognitive modelling that
apprehends sensations, intuitions and perceptions and gives them concrete,
developable form— may be seen as the essential enabling activity in designing.
«Imagining» and «imaging», in mutually responsive accord, constitute the means
by which new concepts are apprehended, refined and realised. It may be said
with certainty that they are among the most essential disciplines of design
education.8
The National Curriculum document frequently links the notions of designing and making, but makes clear that these should refer not only to materials and technological processes, but to ideas, thought processes, planning ahead and consideration of future or alternative possibilities in terms of human behaviour, management of resources, the making of meaning and cultural significance. This will involve the production of reports, proposals, plans, exhibitions, books, presentations as well as prototypes and artefacts. In environmental design education, for instance, making will not necessarily happen in terms of buildings being built or landscapes created, though other practical outcomes might ensue. Indeed, not all environmental design education in schools has designing at the centre of the learning activity, but develops instead from an experience of the design of existing buildings and spaces, emphasising critical study. Resource
Resources are often thought of in
terms of books, materials and facilities, and, indeed, these are very significant
in determining the quality of educational provision. However, the environment
itself is a valuable resource. Infinitely varied in opportunities for aesthetic
and design experience, it is the richest and most accessible source of
reference, yet it is often undervalued as a resource for learning and teaching.
Perhaps this is because it is more difficult to come to grips with the
ordinary, the commonplace and even the banal encounters with our everyday
environment than it is to deal with those that are more distant and exotic. The
National Curriculum identifies five contexts for design studies: the home;
school; community; recreation; commerce and industry. From evidence of work in
schools, it is clear that many different environments have been chosen as a
focus for study —school grounds, the local neighbourhood, the high street, the
shopping centre, housing estates, sports grounds, parks and play facilities,
villages, urban and suburban settings. Most of the studies have been in places
reasonably near to the school because of ease of access, but some have involved
visits and field trips to places further afield.
 Experiential
learning
Experiential learning is
characterised by a commitment to the immediate and concrete, to experience of
people and things. It draws on the primary source of pupils’ direct experience
with the environment, rather than on secondhand experience which has been
mediated through books, audiovisual means or other people, such as the teacher.
It builds on the basis of pupils’ knowledge rather than on their ignorance.
What is taught are the skills and methods of learning; what is developed in the
pupils is the capacity to learn and to apply the results of that learning. This
is particularly important in the case of environmental topics, which are often
subject to information-overload in an area liable to rapid change and
development. It is inappropriate to promote environmental and design studies
primarily through a knowledge-based curriculum. It is more important to develop
the skills and capacities needed to confront the complex and dynamic area of
environmental perception. An analysis of work in schools reveals a series of
separate yet interlinked phases in the development of an environmental design
project.
Streetwork
The basis of the work is direct
sensory experience of the environment. Drawing and photography are used as
note-taking, aids to memory, to interrupt and capture the streams of
perceptions and reactions that come crowding in. With practice, they can help
pupils to see and analyse what might otherwise go unnoticed and certainly
unrecorded. Study methods are designed to extend and intensify experience, to
focus attention, to deepen concentration and to develop perceptual, analytical
and recording skills.
Studio
work/classwork
Work in the classroom or studio
permits time to reflect on the experience, to rework it in order to make sense
of it. It is an opportunity for the pupils to explore and develop thoughts and
feelings about the environment and to come to a deeper understanding of their
experience, different from that afforded by first impressions. The symbolic
language of art is used to give form and expression to these ideas and art
activity is used as a means of synthesising what has been learnt. Drawings,
paintings, collage, photographs, slide programmes are used to reflect pupil’s
growing aesthetic and design awareness and to communicate a feeling response to
place.
Critical study
We make judgements all the time
about environmental quality, even if it is only at the level of what we choose
to acknowledge or ignore. We have our preferences and prejudices, our likes and
dislikes. The importance of critical study is to explore how we arrive at these
judgements and to enable us to explain and justify our opinions. In the crit
sessions, pupils generally set up an exhibition of work —maps, diagrams,
annotated sketches, models, illustrations, photographs— anything that can offer
a basis for qualitative judgement and insight. They then make formal
presentations of their findings and opinions. This is followed by questioning,
discussion, the putting forth of alternative views or explanations. Group
interaction is articularly important here. There is a need to compare one's
ideas with those of others, to be prepared to be open to different points of
view, to be able to weigh evidence and opinion and to develop the ability to
frame an argument to support one's own viewpoint.
Design activity
There is a natural progression from
understanding how buildings and places have come to be the way they are to
asking how they might be in the future. In design activity, many of the
techniques used to explore the physical reality of the existing environment can
be redeployed to give substance to proposals for change and improvement. Here
drawing and photography take their place with other modelling media to
make it possible for groups to work together to explore possibilities and
alternatives for dealing with change.
Design and
technology capability
The Design Technology Report9 identities four attainment
targets which define a series of activities to be undertaken by all pupils
engaging in design and technological work. Further advice on levels of
attainment indicates the degree of sophistication pupils are expected to
achieve. The four attainment targets are:
1. Identifying needs and opportunities. Pupils should be able to identify and state clearly needs and opportunities for design and technological activities through investigation of the contexts of home, school, recreation, community, business and industry. 2.
Generating a design proposal. Pupils should be able to generate a performance
specification and explore ideas to produce a design proposal and develop it
into a realistic, appropriate and achievable design.
3.
Planning and making. Pupils
should be able to prepare a plan to achieve their design, and to identify,
manage and use appropriate resources, including knowledge and processes, in
order to make artefacts, systems and environments.
4.
Evaluating. Pupils
should be able to develop, communicate and act upon an evaluation of the
processes, products and effects of their design and technological activities
and of those of others, including those from other times and cultures.
In environmental design studies, it is usual to start with an experience of design, to evaluate this and then to consider possibilities for change, so attainment target 4 is generally the starting point. Visual language
A principal means of developing the
work has been through the use of a visual language, expressed in drawing, and
photography. Together with painting, collage and three-dimensional work, these
have been used in perception and analysis, to comment on what exists, and in
design activity, to consider what might be. Drawing and photography are of
prime importance in creating a different kind of relationship with the
environment and building up a rich store of visual reference. They can both
help to focus attention, to scan a large quantity of information, or to provide
for detailed study. They create relationships between people and places that
are different from those experienced in the casual looking processes of
everyday life. They offer a source of reference which permits reflection upon
experience and provides a basis from which to rework it, so that meaning can be
created.
Ideas need to be made external,
visible and accessible before they can become a subject for reflection,
analysis, discussion and development. It is necessary to express them in order
to think —the process of exteriorising ideas, reworking, manipulating,
extending, modifying them in order to create more complex or refined ideas.
There must be some tangible expression of the ideas as a basis for further
thought and action. It is also certainly necessary to express them in order to
share them. In environmental design studies, drawings and photographs are not
necessarily an end in themselves, but are used as a means of study. They need
to be deliberately employed as study tools and their different functions need
to be recognised and exploited. The choice of content and function for a
drawing made as a means of study must depend on its social role. It has to
respond to questions such as: is this drawing to help me clarify my ideas? Or
does it work for a group, making possible discussion and understanding between
a number of like-minded people? Or is it to be a focus for communication with
people who may be unfamiliar with —even hostile to— the ideas and propositions
involved? Some forms of drawing are private, some coercive, some conducive to
discussion. Some reveal a process of exploration, while others are intended to
persuade and convince.
Verbal language
But the use of a verbal language on
its own is inadequate. All the experiences, ideas and information we encounter
and generate are of little use unless we are able to think about them and can
use the knowledge gained as a basis for action. Critical thinking enables us to
make informed value judgements, to make decisions and take action. Criticism
demands some consideration of how value judgements are arrived at, and there
needs to be some attempt to explain views or justify opinions. Reasoned
argument is a central concern. The use of words and images together is
essential for qualitative study of the environment. Discussion, argument and
debate are very important parts of comparing one’s own perceptions with those
of others, of extending one’s own vision and refining opinions. Teachers need
to value group work, where pupils are involved in interactive and
inter-dependent working. Pupils learn by comparing with those of others, by
understanding how judgements are arrived at, what factors are taken into
consideration.
Questioning, comparing notes,
pointing out, commenting, describing, explaining are all part of this process.
Discussion may centre around the differences in experience and perception, the
judgements which have been made and the criteria on which they have been based.
Pupils will develop the ability and confidence to communicate an opinion, to
articulate a judgement, to support an argument, to engage in an exchange of
points of view. The experience of a formal presentation to an audience is very
different from a discussion with friends or a chat with an interested adult.
Study methods
Environmental design studies place
greater responsibility on the pupils to be in control of the learning process.
Compare this with more traditional, desk-bound study, where the implicit
assumption on the part of both pupils and teachers is that there is an outside
authority, teacher or textbook, that knows the answers, and that the pupil’s
task is to seek out the received wisdom. In environmental design studies, a
much greater emphasis is placed on the pupils making a right judgement, based
on informed opinion. Study methods need to challenge pupils, whatever their
abilities, to support and channel their learning activities. Environmental
design studies provide opportunities for both individual and group work, for
activities which are solitary and reflective, and those which are interactive
and generative. Design education involves collaboration, the resolution of
conflict, compromise, argument and debate between pupils. The group is used for
stimulus, challenge, support, disturbance and reinforcement.
Models
The issue here for the teacher is
how to organise learning and teaching activities effectively. The National
Curriculum in the UK,
with its obsession with attainment targets, profile components and testing,
draws on models of industrial and commercial management as a basis for
education. These have implications for who teachers are, what they do and how
they do it. There is a danger that teachers will come to be not even
technicians, but merely operatives, delivering a service (I am not sure if this
is to be in the mode of a van driver or midwife). To do this, they will be able
to draw on a dazzling range of products, kits, packs and programmes, developed
and packaged by others, then sold to teachers at the education trade lairs
called in-service courses and conferences. In turn, teachers will become the middlemen
of the education distribution system, purveyors of knowledge, operating a
classroom supermarket of resource banks, databases, worksheets and techniques.
Lessons will be ticked off on time sheets, work quality controlled through
tests and pupils stamped with seals of approval by means of examination
certificates. In our schools at least, Britain will be a nation of
educational shopkeepers.
Role of the
teacher
Design education requires a
different view of the school and the teacher. Too often teachers describe
themselves as facilitiators, claim that the work was all the children’s ideas
and assign themselves the role of servicing agent, provider of scissors, paste
and balsa wood, smiling and nodding encouragement throughout. This is not the
case in environmental design education. Here, the teacher’s task is a complex
and demanding one. It requires them to create opportunities for learning, to
manipulate situations to stretch able pupils and support weaker ones; to
introduce unfamiliar concepts and new ways of working appropriate for their
pupils. It involves them in a variety of roles: organiser, mentor, devil’s
advocate, information source, guide, supervisor, instructor, commentator,
demonstrator, facilitator, referee, critic, interpreter, counsellor and fellow
traveller. Teachers tend to take their own professional skills for granted —how
to address children, how to stimulate and hold their interest and
concentration, how to communicate with them, how to organise a group, how to
support and direct a range of learning activities, to juggle a range of
interests and engagements at the same time, how to anticipate problems, how to
deal with them are all part of a teacher’s daily routine.
The good learner
In environmental design studies,
the teacher’s expertise is to be found not so much in his or her knowledge of
the environment or of design, but in understanding how to learn and being able
to communicate that understanding. They demand what is known as generative mode
of learning and teaching; generating and sharing experience; reflecting upon it
and reworking it; deriving meaning from it; investing that understanding in
action and further learning.
Teachers are by definition
successful learners. The teacher needs to demonstrate the model of the good
learner, showing clearly how to confront new experience and unfamiliar ideas,
how to assimilate them into existing knowledge and how to invest the results in
future action. Through their active engagement in the learning process with
their pupils, teachers demonstrate how it is possible to develop design
capability.
Long term aims
The concern of environmental design
studies in schools is to improve the level of education that young people receive
in relation to planning, landscape, urban design, architecture, building and
interior design. Although this whole area is much influenced by technology,
social need and economics, we need to recognise that it is also crucially about
the visual and formal qualities of places and buildings. Without this
perception, the environment comes to represent only utilitarian values and to
neglect the aesthetic and the spiritual. This is of particular importance when
we are considering future development. Change is the only certainty we have.
Whether slow and imperceptible or sudden and dramatic, change is the only thing
of which we can be sure. How might we introduce young people to the notion of
dealing with change positively and creatively? Environmental design studies
offer an exciting and challenging opportunity.
.
1. Design and Technology for
ages 5 to 16, Department of Education and
Science, June 1989.
2. Design in General Education, Royal College
of Art, 1975.
3. Adams, Eileen, and Ward, Colin, Art
and the Built Environment: A Teacher’s Approach, Longman, 1982.
4. The Curriculum from 5-/6, Curriculum
Matters 2, HMSO, 1985.
5. Eisner, Eliot, The Perceptive Eye.
6. Design and Technology for ages 5 to 16.
7. Assorted Papers, Royal College
of Art Ken Baynes, 1982.
8. Thistlewood, David, The
Essential Disciplines of Design Education. Issues in Design Education, Longman/NSEAD,
1990.
9.
Design and Technology for ages 5 to 16
|
Sobre l'autor
EILEEN ADAMS
És pedagoga i professora.
Autora de projectes educatius com: Art and the Built Environment, Learning
to See, Signs of Design: Environment i Leamtng through Landscapes.
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