The 'right kind of telling' - knowledge building in the academic design studio

What I read

In this article, the authors describe the results of an ethnographic study in the context of design studio, primarily focused on student-to-teacher interactions. They summarize their findings in five key guidelines (described below.)

The authors first ground their work in that of Schön, focusing on his idea that design studio depends on the "right kind of telling." They described that studio is "simultaneously a class, a space, and a pedagogical method of instruction," and all three of these qualities are explained. Some of the problems of implementing a studio approach to education is that they are "resource intensive, requiring dedicated studio space, large blocks of class time within a student's course of study, and extensive faculty time." The authors' goal is to understand how to adapt studio to other disciplines that may not have ways around these challenges.

Studio as a space is where students have dedicated desks, where they can come and go as they need, and where they can leave their work exposed for long periods of time. The authors cite Arvola and Artman in showing the benefits of this setup—that "the lack of constant access to other students in the studio space limited student-to-student collaboration and impeded students' ability to use each other as resources, get another perspective, or try out their design decisions prior to formal classroom interactions." They note that "The unplanned interactions that occurred within open studio hours were especially important in moving students' ideas forward when they were stuck.

Studio as a class is briefly described, and the authors indicate that it is defined by longer blocks of continuous learning.

Studio as a pedagogy "consists of project-based assignments followed by public presentations of student work for critique." These presentations are called crit, and the authors quote Cossentino who "rightfully noted that, 'the tradition of ongoing and reciprocal performance punctuated by criticism is so central to the pedagogy of the design studio that it is not considered assessment at all. Rather, it is the essence of instruction.'" They also indicate that Fleming viewed the "pedagogical function of studio talk was to first develop a shared vision of the object under discussion and then to perform a problem-solving function."

The authors then describe the framework they use to consider critique. They begin with Shaffer's three-tiered model, which includes surface structures, pedagogy, and epistemology; they add a fourth category, community of practice, to "focus on the co-production of design work among instructors and students." This includes the "'social space' of the studio where the academic and professional cultures overlap—a sheltered 'practice community'."

The authors describe their research, which included observing data from five classes. This data was analyzed through "case study methodology" and included comprehensive analysis of video, as well as written content from professors and students. A number of themes emerged from this analysis.

One of these themes was the idea of "listening-in," where students listened to a one-on-one critique, observed the interactions between student and instructor, and added their own thoughts. Another was "modeling," where "the instructor offered both explicit and tacit guidance into the norms of what constitutes 'good design' or productive design practices." This was related to "meta-discussions," where student project work led to a conversation of professional examples. The authors noted that when all students worked towards the same project goal, but on their own, they were able to provide better critique than when the subject matter was different. The theme "in-progress critiques" is discussed in the most depth, and serves as one of the largest findings of the study. They indicate that "project critiques were most valuable when students presented their work as in-progress, narrating their thinking, rather than demonstrating their final products. The value of the intermediate crits or pin-ups, where students present their early design concepts as they are struggling to make decisions, cannot be overstated."

The authors describe the value of their findings. One key point is that a successful studio environment fosters conversation and dialogue, based on the student work. Another is that, while they recognize other research has described the negative aspects of critique, they found that "project critiques, instead of being merciless, provided key opportunities for students to learn the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of a design discipline." This was due primarily to the way instructors spoke; "rather than providing answers to the problems the student faced, the instructor instead encouraged more reflection by the student."

The authors end by proposing five key guidelines for studio-based instruction. These include assigning the same project to all students, providing opportunities for students to listen-in on each other, including public critique, conducting meta-discussions about key ideas, and encouraging iteration with in-progress review.

What I learned and what I think

At the center of many of these conversations of critique is the misuse of the word critique. Some of this seems to stem from Dannel's work that describes critique as inclusive of desk crit, pin-up, juries, reviews, and open houses. A "desk crit" is not what it sounds like (and while that may be what it's called in architecture, it's not referred to that way in industrial design studios.) Working one-on-one with a student is not a critique, even when it involves pointing out things that are bad, or drawing on top of their work, or offering different ways to think about what was made. Modeling an idea is not a critique. Recasting a student's work in the context of a recognized real artifact is not a critique. These things are, as these authors point out in quoting Cossentino, the essence of design instruction.

The word "criticism" is problematic, too, because of its not-right overlap with art criticism. A bunch of architects throwing stones at a student in their final jury is not the same as thinking critically about what a student made.

I think it matters because it's screwing up a few things.

One is that "critique" is a special type of activity. It's an experience, with a start and an end. It has rules. It has good and bad pedagogical approaches. It can be in-progress or at the end of a project, and those have different rules. But it isn't the same as teaching design. It's a tool, but it's a 100% different tool than what happens when a teacher is sitting with a student at their desk. And so when papers make big statements or conclusions about the abusive nature of a critique, they are basically folding in all of the things that happen at a desk (or, for that matter, at a celebration) and casting the same judgement on them.

Another is that it leads to a strange divide in academic research. This particular paper has basically nothing to do with critique, but a ton to do with teaching design. The authors go out of their way to separate what they observed from what Dannels is talking about, but they don't have to, because they aren't comparing the same things. I think this paper is actually much more useful than just a contribution to a part of design; it's really a part of how to teach.

I'm still stuck with "all roads lead to Schön." I can't claim to be anywhere near as well-read with his work as all of these authors seem to be, but it seems extraordinary that his work holds all the answers to our teaching questions.

I also keep returning to the physical infrastructure necessary to make a studio work, and how unlikely it is that a school will ever provide that (unless it already has it) unless a Really Rich Designer gives them money and tells them it has to be for dedicated desks. There's also something in here about how this works via Zoom. I'm not sure I want to touch that one, lest I end up making another stupid digital whiteboard.