Culture as a design “next”: Theoretical frameworks to guide new design, development, and research of learning environments

Abstract

In the design ecosystem, culture is often ignored or relegated to the periphery, perhaps because some see it as a concept that is hard to explain or completely capture. To contribute to a new direction, our paper presents a portion of an on-going study integrating and recognizing culture in the design process. We argue that the “next’” focus of design should be an inclusion of culture into design practices; an inclusion that is merged into every stage instead of being treated as an afterthought – most notably, during the evaluation stage. There exist numerous models and guides exploring the role of culture in learning design of which designers involved in the learning can and should be aware. In this paper we aim to review and present these models as a beginning place for those interested in designing for cross-cultural education ecosystems and programs intended to support learning needs.