Designing Education: Theorising a Critical-creative Practice
Jennifer L. Bain, Juliet Sprake · Goldsmiths (University of London) · 2017
This body of work seeks to develop the theoretical underpinning of designing education as a critical creative practice. Bringing together a range of theoretical and practice-oriented concepts from pedagogy, design and design anthropology, this work seeks to outline our distinct approach to designing education as the fusion of a critical practice (of Design) with a critical pedagogy. The context of this work is to both ask questions of and offer theoretical constructs for developing philosophical platforms for creative learning that might situate, alter, question, or challenge knowledge about/within our designing education practice. Through collaborative engagement with our colleagues in the Philippines and beyond, we have taken an iterative approach to developing the theoretical perspectives that underpin our approach to designing education, so that they are informed by and, in turn, inform our designing education practice. The methodology for this body of work starts with a review of relevant literature to inform a conceptual start-point for participant action research (PAR). Then, as part of the PAR study, we work with colleagues in RP to explore how such theoretical underpinning supports a philosophical platform for praxis (reflection and action), rooted in and supported by diverse critical theoretical constructs that seek to empower both educators and learners. This work will be supported by the award of Newton Institutional Links grant of £110K (Feb 2019 to Feb 2020).