An ethnography of the design studio: Exploring social interactions and performances in studio environment through Goffman's dramaturgical approach

Critical Analysis

In this text, the authors draw a parallel between an educational design studio and Goffman’s theory of Dramaturgical Approach, where “an individual has to act in a way that he deliberately or not expresses himself and in return, observers inevitably have to be impressed.” The researchers gather data from a first-year industrial design and interior architecture studio; the data is gathered through direct observation, student/professor discussion in a small group, and participation in a small chat group with two students. Using the metaphor of the performance, the authors identify five unique types of student performers in the class, and use examples of student interactions to illustrate the differences between these performance approaches.

The main contribution of the text is in the identification of these archetypical performers, and the brief indication that the types have no hard boundaries: that they are “transitional descriptions in which performers can move around.”

Younger students are in a particularly formative time in their lives, where they are actively “practicing” the type of performer they want to be. A professor has likely already established their own personal style as well as the role they are going to play in a classroom, but a student is a double novice. This provides an opportunity for a professor to break the performance wall and help guide individuals towards establishing a sense of self by trying on different characters or performance styles. A “bad student” can be a “good actor”—that is, they can perform well at being an underperformer; they can, theoretically, be taught to be a good actor at being a good student, too.

It may be valuable to make the performance metaphor explicit to students. They might then experience introspection on their role, and have an opportunity to reflect on how they are being perceived. As design education is often focused on vocational output, it may also be valuable to describe the expectations of performance in the “real life” context of a work environment. This environment is also a performance, but with different types of actors and different views of quality. Again, making this explicit can prepare students for different shows they may later encounter.

The authors miss an opportunity to explore the unique nature of the studio environment. The development of the five archetypes of student performers could be found in any classroom and at any educational level. What is unique about a design studio performance? The studio has unique qualities: students typically have unlimited access to the space, the lines between teaching and learning are blurry, there are few lectures, critique is introduced in a variety of ways, and the focus is on making artifacts and learning to be reflective during making. What is unique about these qualities as performances?

The research methodology may have led to this gap. The authors were simultaneously researchers and professors, which means they were largely observing from a place of performance—they were unable to observe the parts of the show when they weren’t present, and they actively shaped the show themselves. The small focus group style interview, and the small chatroom of two students and the professors, were themselves performances, and were very different performances than the classroom itself. All of these research methods, in combination, likely made it impossible to see beyond simple and surface-level interactions. The analysis of chat messages is extremely compelling as a way of gathering data about student-to-student interactions, but the chat style the researchers selected was less valuable, as it was essentially moderated by the researchers themselves.

Perhaps the biggest weakness of this text is that the authors make no indication of the implications of the work, either as a basis for future research or for changes in educational pedagogy. It would have been valuable to understand if Goffman’s theory is a useful way of exploring studio, and if not, what parts of this lens are lacking. The authors could also identify the implications of everything-as-performance on teaching and learning creative design skills, specifically. Additionally, the authors could generalize learnings from the five archetypes that were identified, and show how they can be “used.”

Finally, a large critique can be made both of the paper and of Goffman’s theory itself: the metaphor becomes tired very quickly, and so a great deal of responsibility rests on the authors in making clear the value of this lens. The enactment of a play or performance is related to a phenomenological view of behavior as contextual and actively moderated, and these could be integrated in order to show that Goffman’s theory can be used in combination with other ways of thinking about experience. Mewburn, Crolla, Dannels, and Percy all describe critique as a performance or play. Goffman's lens extends this to the entirety of studio, but the implications of this extension are not clear.

Research Value

The value of this work in informing my own research is that:

• It offers Dramaturgical Approach as a lens through which to view the studio and studio education, and I can use this selectively when examining important moments that I observe in my data. I don’t need to use this lens consistently, but can instead “activate” it when a studio situation appears particularly staged or performative
• It introduces chat-group participation as a potential way to gather data, particularly related to Goffman’s idea of “backstage” performance