October 25, 2025 | 2 minute read
I submitted my second study to the IRB for approval.
I'm going to spin up two research programs over the next five weeks or so, with the intent of working on this research through the end of this academic year and the beginning of the next. I've started this first, which is focused on studio teaching. Through interviews with studio educators, I'll gather data that highlights their views of studio culture and how their own experiences have shaped what they teach and how they teach it.
Details of the study are below.
Background and Purpose
People who have pursued formal design education in a college or university setting often experience “studio learning.” Studio learning has many characteristics. The most immediately noticeable is that the physical space in which learning occurs bears almost no resemblance to a traditional college classroom. There are no rows of chairs, student work is displayed on the walls, and studios often have casual, more domestic areas such as lounges or kitchens. Studio pedagogy is entirely different from a traditional teaching approach. Professors rarely lecture, and instead circulate amongst students, have one-on-one or small group discussions, and prompt much of their teaching based on the artifacts that students make. Work is project-based and so it occurs over time, and while deadlines and due dates are broadly synchronized, students are typically engaged at different parts in a project at any given time. Work is critiqued in addition to being graded, and subjective feedback guides experiential learning.
These qualities of studio education are just some of the aspects of “design studio culture,” and this culture is frequently described by those who have experienced it with nostalgia and extreme, effusive emotion. Aspects of the culture that appear illogical, unhealthy, or even abusive are often described, in retrospect, with affection: staying up all night, experiencing a particularly demeaning critique, drinking heavily, and even fighting with classmates can be later romanticized and viewed as having a base and foundational impact on building an identity as a designer.
While certain aspects of studio education—particularly critique (Blair 2006; Dannels 2005; Orr & Bloxham 2013) and creative pedagogy (Schön 1983; Cross 2006; Cennamo & Brandt 2012)—have received scholarly attention, the affective and cultural dimensions of studio learning remain comparatively underexamined. Prior research has illuminated how critique practices reinforce authority and hierarchy and how reflective practice fosters professional identity, but less is known about how faculty members’ own emotional attachments and memories of their studio education shape their current teaching philosophies. This research will explore these other topics, with a particular focus on the nostalgia that design educators have towards their own experiences learning in a design studio, and how those feelings and memories influence their current approaches to teaching design and to shaping design studio culture.
Research Goals
The goal of this research is to inform these research questions:
- How do design educators describe their own studio learning experiences?
- What qualities of design studio culture do design educators feel are the most important to carry into their own teaching? Why do they place significance on these qualities? Why are other qualities ignored or deemed less significant?
- What are specific ways in which educators try to foster and encourage studio culture in their own academic programs? Which have been successful? Which have not?