Reflection in design education

Louis Lousberg,Sylvia Jansen,Engbert Van Der Zaag,Remon Rooij,Elise Van Dooren,John Heintz

doi:10.1007/s10798-019-09532-6

Louis Lousberg, Sylvia Jansen + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10798-019-09532-6

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Abstract

In this article we evaluate the manner in which we at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the Delft University of Technology encourage the development of the capacity of reflection among our undergraduate students. First we explore the concept of reflection in relation to respectively experiential/reflective learning, reflection in/on action, reflection in higher education and reflection in design education. Next we describe our research object, our Bachelor course in Academic Design Reflection. Two research questions are at hand: (1) does the level of reflection increase during our course and (2) Can the operationalisation in our questionnaire of the definitions of reflection derived from theory statistically be confirmed? We measured and processed statistically the level of reflection of 100 students in 3 of their papers on their design. Results show there is a significant slight increase of this level among the three papers. Results also show that our model of classification is not statistically confirmed in the data. We conclude with a discussion on the implications for further research and for design education.

Highlights

‘The first challenge for engineering education is to anticipate the capabilities our graduates will need in their future jobs’ (Kamp 2016a, b: p. 12)
Two research questions are at hand: (1) does the level of reflection increase during our course and (2) Can the operationalisation in our questionnaire statistically confirm the definition of reflection derived from theory?
Our second research question is: can the operationalisation in our questionnaire of the definitions of reflection derived from theory statistically be confirmed?

Summary

Introduction

‘The first challenge for engineering education is to anticipate the capabilities our graduates will need in their future jobs’ (Kamp 2016a, b: p. 12). Over a 10 week period, these students (about 150 two times per academic year) develop both an integral design for a museum and a series of four academic papers underpinning and evaluating (1) the design situation, (2) the design theme, (3) the design process and (4) the relation between design and academic research. From this evaluation we draw conclusions on the effectiveness of the reflection and derive implications for design education. Reflection can be seen as Dewey’s (1933) ‘thinking to encompass feelings and emotions in practice settings’ (in: Boud and Garrick 1999: p. 4), as ‘thinking about doing something while doing it’ (Schön 1982: p. 54), as ‘reflective learning’ (Moon 2004: p. 80) or as ‘a means to engage in making sense of experience

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Conclusion