Lost in translation; Reconsidering reflective practice and design studio pedagogy

What I read

In this text, Mewburn discusses the work of Donald Schön, identifying some of the ways his theories of reflective practice in education are lacking. She provides an alternative view—that education can be a performance—using a short example from another educator. She concludes that there is more to the pedagogy of teaching design studio than one piece of work, and encourages a much broader exploration for educators.

First, Mewburn describes the basis of most architecture education: a design studio, where design crit interactions occur between an educator and a student. These are exercises in roleplay, with the educator taking on the guise of an experienced architect. These models mimic older master/apprentice models, where education happened in the space of real work, but have been moved into an academic setting. As this context is different, it demands different ways of teaching and learning. Mewburn describes that she will explore both the most accepted form of this reflection in action, but from a perspective of “actor-network theory”, where a researcher “attempts to explore the agency of non-human as well as human actors.” This theory is one that works to observe and then describe “effects”, which are situations or ways of being that are considered factual. It implies that there is no one space of an idea (such as architecture), and instead, the idea is made up of overlapping spaces.

Next, Mewburn describes Donald Schön’s work, which has been considered the foundation of most modern pedagogical instruction. His work was in response to the science-based approach to education that he perceived—that “problem solving can be made rigorous by the application of scientific theory and technique.” He indicates that reflection-in-action is a way for a design scenario to “talk back” to the designer, progressing a creative conversation. He argues that the goal of design education should be to foster this reflection-in-action, and so design educators need to find ways to present this tacit experience in a way students can understand.

Mewburn then describes how Schön arrived at this way of thinking about education, which comes primarily from a study by Roger Simmonds. Schön focused on one educator from that study, Quist, and discusses in detail the relationship between Quist and a student, Petra. This, Mewburn notes, is almost entirely the basis for the development of Schön’s theory. Quist is observed to be an expert, and his strategy was to “model new design processes for his students with the belief that this approach would help students to try out design practices that might initially make them feel uncomfortable.” While Petra is presented as a subservient (and almost irrelevant) participant as described by Schön, she kept a notebook, which presents an opposite view—that she might be learning just one view of design, and that is problematic.

Mewburn suggests that the use of a single ethnographic experience and set of participants might be problematic for grounding an entire theory of work, and that the details as presented by Schön differ from those as presented by both the study’s author and Petra, the participant. It’s a selective retelling, but led to a “generically transferable model of teaching and learning,” which is thin research, yet “the theory of reflective practice is remarkably durable.” She views this as insufficient, and that it ignores the role of other actors, including more people, policies, tools, and the environment, which clearly play a role, too. She illustrates this through two journal-based accounts of her own, one documenting her own teaching experience and one documenting another Professor’s approach.

She describes her own account of working with a student in a desk crit, where she responded to a student who seemed to miss the point of an assignment, by letting him know that that work would not satisfy the requirements of a client. The student did not agree that this was a problem, and rationalized that this would be one of the few opportunities he would have to actually purposefully reject requirements. She reflects on this written experience, recognizing that she was using a Schön-based approach; she then questions “Is it possible to be an effective design teacher if you don’t try to coach at all?”

She juxtaposes her own experiences with the style of another professor, Peter Corrigan. In Corrigan’s studio teaching, he takes an entirely different approach, one that could be viewed almost as that of an actor. He positions the students in a messy, non-academic context (his office.) During class sessions, he acts disconnected, sometimes interrupts or ignores the students entirely, offers little personal suggestions or teaching, and encourages conversation and critique between students. Mewburn emphasizes that he frequently sighs loudly, as if he’s disappointed with the students, and feels that those sighs “encouraged self-discipline by non-verbally asking the student to think about their performance of critique as they performed it.” He has removed himself from the educator-as-expert, and transformed himself into an educator-as-actor. Instead of teaching students to think like an architect, “he plays a part in manufacturing experiences designed to provoke the visceral subjectivity of the struggling young architect in practice.”

Mewburn concludes the text by indicating that a single theory of reflective practice is overly simplistic, and that learning is complex. She questions if there can or should even be a single theory of design education, and that, as the studio is flexible, so too should be the approaches educators use. Sometimes Schön’s approach may be effective; sometimes Corrigan’s approach may be effective.

What I learned and what I think

This is the first thing I’ve read in this months-long-endeavor where I found myself nodding strongly in agreement, but to ideas that I haven’t heard or formalized before. There are multiple ways to teach design, and I probably have over-subscribed to Schön’s way of thinking. The more I reflect on it, I’ve actually never taught in a Schön-like way, but I work in that way, and try to tell students about it rather than show them that. My critique style is very much aligned with Corrigan, but with bumpers on it, because I recognize that it’s emotionally abusive.

I wonder what my own approach is; I know it, but I’ve never formalized it and written it down, even in How I Teach (have I? I need to re-read it.) I think it’s some combination of these ingredients;

Assigning students far too much to do in a given time, so they understand that they can actually accomplish a lot more than they thought

Providing an extremely detailed list of criteria for grading, but focusing it on operations rather than on creative substance

Writing detailed, personalized feedback to both provide responses and to show that someone is actually paying attention to them; and delivering that feedback as soon as possible, to show that if they work hard, I’m working hard too

Being as direct as possible in presentations, critique, and working sessions

Pretending, like Corrigan, and acting, and taking on different professional types of roles (and doing the same sort of over-the-top sighing-like-things)

Minimizing conversation and maximizing making, but being as Socratic as possible during any form of theory conversation

Building learning structures that recognize total confusion the first time someone does something, and then providing ways to do it again (and hopefully many times after that)

Minimizing group work, if possible, so that students can develop their own skills

Showing that I can actually design, in order to build credibility not just as an educator but also as a practitioner

These are all, I think, next positive approaches. Student evaluations seem to affirm that, and I can also see that in skill development. But the collateral damage of this is that I come across, probably just like Quist or even like Corrigan, as overbearing, overly masculine, condescending, and in the same space as “trust me…” So what are other approaches that work? I know a lot that don’t work; the entire hands-off, here’s a lecture, good luck… teaching software… ambiguity, at least for early students… I still appreciate the “large project” approach, like building a full-on fuselage and airplane interior at SCAD, but I now question how valuable it actually was.

In all of this—mine, Schön’s, Quists, Corrigan’s—I don’t see the actual studio learning that I encountered at CMU. That was not a presentation with a response from a professor; it was much closer to Mewburn’s real-time sketching, which she tried with the student that was ignoring requirements. I remember Jon McKlusky drawing on top of my work as one of the most formative parts of my education, probably because it showed me a better way to do things without explicitly telling me my thing sucked (I already knew it), and because it showed me that working artifacts aren’t precious and ideas don’t have owners.

Maybe another path of exploration for me is to just try to gather different actual hands-on methods for design education. What if I run a study where I watch design professors in action, and document their styles? There are a whole bunch of schools in the Orange County area...

I’ll also track down more from this author.