August 14, 2025 | 7 minute read
The design studio 'crit' - Teacher–student communication
by Gabriela Goldschmidt, Hagay Hochman and Itay Dafni
What I read
In this text, the authors examine the verbal protocols of three desk-crits in a second-year architecture class. Their previous research identified eight different teaching approaches, and they identify the frequency with which these approaches are used during each critique. They conclude that their method of analysis is an effective one for assessing how educators teach.
The authors begin by describing how a studio environment shows up in a design class. Crits "are of great importance to students who are eager to be positively assessed by their teachers and therefore listen carefully to their comments and suggestions," but as instructors have little training in how to teach, the suggestions may not be delivered in a useful manner. This paper will focus on the performance of teachers, to "devise a dense representation of the studio teaching activity that will enable us to unveil its complexity."
The authors explain the one-on-one critique in more detail. They identify that it is uniformly used, but there is little literature analyzing it; however, they describe some of their own previous work. They indicate that three major profiles of teaching exist, including an instructor as a source of expertise or authority, an instructor as a coach or facilitator, and an instructor as a "buddy" or friend.
Next, they describe their methodology for this case study analysis. Based on recordings of a teacher working with a student at their desk, the authors coded the things that were said to eight categories, which they use "because they reflect the teacher's pedagogical theory in use, even if he or she is not aware of it." These are used later in shorthand, so they are repeated here for reference:
- Report/review/analysis of the state of the design
- Clarification questions
- Proposals for change/improvement
- Reference to design precedents/examples
- Explication of design issues, theory/principles/norms/conventions
- Statements regarding design methodology/presentation
- Praise, expression of satisfaction, encouragement
- Questioning, pointing out of mistakes/shortcomings, expression of dissatisfaction
They also describe that, based on the premise that design problems require a rich network of "links among the moves made by the problem solver," a visualization is required to illustrate these in detail. This is called a linkograph, which the authors appear to have designed specifically for this purpose. This visualizes backlinks, forelinks, and critical moves; they have developed a unique notation to summarize the visualization in text. They describe that "if links are indicative of process properties, then we should pay special attention to those units that have a large number of backlinks or forelinks. Those units are considered critical." They cite themselves as having shown that the proportion of critical moves are correlated with good design solutions.
Next, the authors focus on the source of data itself, gathered from three case studies. Each case study is made up of a student working directly with an instructor, and the verbal protocol is the raw material for analysis. For each case study, the authors first summarize the numbers of verbalizations and words from each participant. They describe the overall demeanor of the instructor/student interactions (such as "the teacher talks a lot"), and use example quotes to illustrate their analysis. A large chart showing the utterances mapped to the eight categories is provided, as is a linkgraph. The authors analyze the linkograph by counting various connections. This is repeated for each case study. The authors then compare the three case studies to one-another, quantitively, showing various percentages of verbal output, category distributions, and the "raising of issues."
The authors summarize and discuss their findings. They describe the behaviors they observed, such as navigating action priorities, raising issues, sustaining ideas in general or specific, and encouraging the student (and more.) They also analyze the teaching style of each instructor, mapping them to the three styles described at the start of the paper. This leads to a number of questions that are raised as a result of analyzing the case studies, which begin to indicate teaching best practices.
They end by describing a larger goal they have—using quantitative data and analyses, which they "feel is the key to understanding the nature of the crits we observed. Quantitative data may help in creating yardsticks, against which every teacher's critiquing behavior can be measured, thus allowing an individual assessment." Ultimately, this can provide feedback to instructors, to help them develop a design pedagogy.
What I learned and what I think
The authors described that the goal of this paper was to "devise a dense representation of the studio teaching activity that will enable to unveil its complexity," and they have definitely achieved that goal. I am struck by the appearance of rigor in the analysis of the transcript data, in terms of counting the presence of stylistic approaches and the number of times things were discussed that related to previous things that were discussed or to future things that will be discussed. It is clear that the raw data has been extensively considered and a great deal of time has been spent working with it.
I'm struggling, however, to identify what I learned or took away from the paper. Objectively, I learned that the linkograph visualization that I previously stumbled upon (in a Nigel Cross paper) is a primary method used by these researchers; that there are eight categories that can be used to frame the types of instructor/student interactions; that it's important to look at the prevalence of hierarchically stacked moves (moving in to their core, and then finding one's way back out); and that, in 2009, design science was alive and kicking.
I'm thinking about the nature of synthesis, and a culture of skepticism that exists in academia, and how those things are at odds with one-another and with the value of research itself. I return to the complexity curve over and over, and this is one of those moments. This paper is a narrative of the synthesis method used by the researchers, as they worked to interpret the data they gathered and find meaning in it. It's also part of an argument that they are making about their results. That's entirely legitimate and a Good Idea if you expect your audience to start from a place of skepticism and knowledge, where your results will directly challenge what they know and think. Maybe it's always a Good Idea in academia. But that level of over-exposition is incredibly distracting. I suppose if you don't do that, you end up in Gladwell pop culture, but it seems like some of the design science articles have over-indexed on the science part, inheriting the culture of providing proof. This plays out practically here, as in the 18 page paper, the interpretation section is about 85% of the content.
I did find the qualitative verbal protocol very interesting, and I found the authors' discussion equally interesting. Their actual, final interpretation summary is the value, and is valuable. So, back to my initial "what did I learn," I think I was hasty in discounting the output because I was overwhelmed with the process. Their final list of ten questions about teaching is a great set of evaluative criteria for good teaching, and given their statement at the beginning—that most teachers are never taught to teach (which is 100% true in my experience)—even seeing this list would be of benefit to new teachers.
The authors cited a number of previous works, which I would like to explore; I will list them here for my own reference:
- Anthony, K.H. (1991). Design Juries on Trial. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
- Austerlitz, N. (Ed.). (2008). Unspoken Interactions: Exploring the Unspoken Dimension of Learning and Teaching in Creative Subjects. Gateshead: Centre for Learning and Teaching in Art and Design.
- Austerlitz, N., & Aravot, I. (2007). Emotions of design students: a new perspective for the design studio. In Design Studio Pedagogy: Horizons for the Future (Salama, A., & Wilkinson, N., Eds.), pp. 233–246. London: Urban International Press.
- Dinham, S.M. (1987b). An ongoing qualitative study of architecture studio teaching: analyzing teacher–student exchanges. Proc. ASHE Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD, November 21–24.
- Doidge, C., Sara, R., & Parnell, R. (Eds.). (2000). The Crit: An Architecture Student's Handbook. Oxford: Architectural Press (Elsevier).
- Ochsner, J.K. (2000). Behind the mask: a psychoanalytic perspective on interaction in the design studio. Journal of Architectural Education 53(4), 194–205.
- Quayle, M. (1985). Ideabook for Teaching Design. Mesa, AZ: PDA Publisher Corporation.
- Sachs, A. (1999). "Stuckness" in the design studio. Design Studies 20(2), 195–209.
- Salama, A.M., & Wilkinson, N. (Eds.). (2007). Design Studio Pedagogy: Horizons for the Future. Gateshead: Urban International Press.
- Uluog˘lu, B. (2000). Design knowledge communicated in studio critiques. Design Studies 21(1), 33–58.
- Wendler, V.W., & Rogers, J.S. (1995). The design life space: verbal communication in the architectural design studio. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 12(4), 319–335.
- Wilkin, M. (2000). Reviewing the review. In Changing Architectural Education (Nicol, D., & Pilling, S., Eds.), pp. 100–107. London: Spon Press.