54 Education in the New

Millennium: The Case for

Design-Based Learning
Hyun-Kyung Lee and Mark Breitenberg

Abstract

This article focuses on current examples of project education based on creative and applied learning.
or design-based learning at the secondary school The exemplar communities chosen for onsite
level in the context of the increasing importance research are the education department of the
of creativity and innovative thinking in the twenty- Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New
first century. The authors argue that students York City and the Art Center College of Design in
today learn more effectively in pedagogical prac- Pasadena, California, USA.
tices that emphasise holistic thinking, active learn-
ing, visual media and problem-solving.
Design-based learning presents new ways for
realising long-term goals and learning outcomes.
The purpose of this article is to investigate best
practices of design education in the community
and to propose instructional resource examples
on design to K-12 school teachers. This article
points out the importance of systemised process
for the work of design-based teachers and learn-
ers, addresses the study of design as a subject of
investigation and a mode of inquiry that engages
a variety of student learning styles and makes
direct connections between subjects and prob-
lem-solving in daily life.
Our belief is that the case studies explored in
this article represent the seeds of a new model of

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© 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Introduction
The larger context for looking at new develop-
ments in project-based or design-based learning
involves the growing international interest in
creativity and innovation, in both its cultural and
economic forms. Bruce Nussbaum, writing for
Business Week, believes we have entered a
‘creativity economy’ in the USA, following in
historical succession our agriculture, industrial
and information-based economies (Nussbaum
2004). Daniel Pink’s argument in the Harvard
Business Review that ‘the MFA has replaced the
MBA’ caused a stir several years ago in both the
design and business education communities. He
argued that the fundamental skills and cognitive
processes of the designer – holistic thinking,
empathy, imagination, creativity, visualising prob-
lems and solutions – have become more impor-
tant in business than the traditional analytic skills
taught in MBA programmes. Pink developed this
thesis in his widely read book, A Whole New
Mind (Pink 2005).
One of the most remarkable statistics in
support of this transformation is China’s creation
of over 1,000 new design schools in the past 10
years alone. Beyond the remarkable growth of its
manufacturing base in the past few decades,
China’s leadership clearly anticipates that innova-
tion and creative thinking will be the keys to
economic success in the future. In addition to
China, the development of design education as
part of a national policy is particularly strong in
other Asian countries such as Korea, Singapore
and Japan. This is partly attributable to the reali-
sation that the traditional ways of learning in
many Asian countries – imitation, repetition,
memorisation and a rather absolute deference to
the authority of the teacher, at least by Western
standards – do not foster the kind of creative
thinking that these countries see as critical to
their economic future. Mayor of Seoul, Sae-Hoon
Oh recently became the first municipal leader to
appoint a Chief Design Officer to his cabinet.
Next year, the Ministry of Education in Singapore
will open not only a new design university, but
even more importantly, the first design-based
learning programme for secondary education
sponsored created by government initiative.
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Clearly we are living in a paradigm shift that will 55
continue to challenge the validity of traditional Hyun-Kyung Lee and
secondary and university pedagogical assump- Mark Breitenberg
tions and methods. Our belief is that the case
studies explored in this article represent the
seeds of a new model of education based on
creative and applied learning.
Conceptual framework (epistemological shift)
The authors suggest that project or design-based
learning is more consistent with and appropriate
to how students learn today. This belief is most
fundamentally a consequence of the fact that
college-age students, and those younger, are the
first generation to be born in the digital age. In
Multimodal Discourse: the Modes and Media of
Contemporary Communication, Gunther Kress
(Kress & Van Leeuwen 2002) argues that we are
undergoing an epistemological shift from a mono-
modal and linear system dominated by the book
and writing, to a multimodal system characterised
by the spatial organisation of different modes,
prominently the image, but also music, writing
and aural language. Kress appropriates ‘design’ in
the broadest sense to describe the emergent
multimodal model: here, meaning is communi-
cated through ‘assemblage’, through the relation-
ships among different media and discourses.
Very few secondary schools have fully under-
stood the consequences of this shift: it means
that visual learning, spatial and holistic thinking,
the need to work simultaneously in different
media, and (most critically) the importance of
active learning over passive learning, are funda-
mental to the learning and cognitive processes of
students today. Pedagogical methods that do not
acknowledge and incorporate this shift will not
succeed in educating students today or in the
future. The project or design-based approaches
to learning cited in this article all work to recog-
nise and utilise the epistemological shift Kress
(Kress & Van Leeuwen 2002) describes.
The phenomenon of design education
The most obvious place for such integration is in
teaching methods courses (Davis et al. 1997).
The first US university design and education
Master’s degree programme began in 1995 at
56 California State Polytechnic University at Pomona.
Hyun-Kyung Lee and Doreen Nelson, with a joint teaching appoint-
Mark Breitenberg ment in the College of Education and Environ-
mental Design, launched a Master of Arts
programme in education, focusing on design and
creativity. California Polytechnic State University
Dean of Education and Integrative Studies Sheila
McCoy and others believe design education actu-
ally improves teachers’ understanding of discipli-
nary content and, in doing so, prepares them for
interdisciplinary teaching (Davis et al. 1997).
One of the participants in the teaching meth-
ods course, who is a director of education depart-
ment of a design museum, was interviewed
about the phenomenon of design education. Her
name has been altered to protect the anonymity
of the participants. According to Christine:
High schools that offer an academic emphasis in
architecture and design are starting to appear in
cities across the United States. Schools of fine art
have been common since the magnet school
concept was introduced several decades ago,
but the appearance of schools of design is a rela-
tively recent phenomenon. Why start a school of
design? It may be that the importance of design in
enhancing economic growth and quality of life is
beginning to enter the public consciousness.
Cover stories about design have begun appearing
in the popular press, major corporations like Apple
and MTV are leveraging innovative design to
create hugely successful products and ad
campaigns, and business consultants from Tom
Peters to Daniel Pink have included chapters in
their recent books about the relevance of design
for success in business today. (Smith 2006)
Rayala (2005) has noted that Miami’s Design and
Architecture Senior High School (DASH), at 15
years old, and Philadelphia’s Charter High School
for Architecture and Design (CHAD), at six, are
the oldest schools of their kind in the country.
New Design High in Manhattan (2003) and
Williamsburg High School for Architecture and
Design in Brooklyn (2004) were launched most
recently, and design education advocates in
Chicago and Cincinnati are currently deciding
whether to start similar schools. As more
© 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
students see the potential to mould their own
futures through the introduction of design
concepts and processes in high school, the
potential for improving the quality of both life and
education through schools of design seems very
promising.
Christine Smith from her interview (Smith
2006) and the book by Davis et al. (1997) insisted
that when students are engaged in the process
of designing, they are learning to observe, iden-
tify needs, seek and frame problems, work
collaboratively, explore solutions, weigh alterna-
tives, and communicate their ideas verbally and
visually. The design process includes periods for
self-assessment, critiques of works in progress,
revisions and opportunities for reflection (Davis et
al. 1997). The direction for young schools of
design is usually to teach ‘through design’ (using
design to support learning in other areas) rather
than ‘about design’ (approaching design as a
cluster of autonomous disciplines), although the
latter is an important goal in many programmes.
Case 1: Types of educational programmes
and their characteristics
School programmes demonstrate the potential
for design to enhance teaching and learning
across the K-12 curricula and throughout the
community (Davis & Moore 1992). According to
the interview with Smith (2006), the Cooper-
Hewitt National Design Museum’s dynamic
educational programmes provide insights into
the ways in which design shapes our lives every
day, encouraging us to understand how design
can be used to shape a better world. The exem-
plar community chosen for onsite research was
the education department of the Cooper-Hewitt
National Design Museum in New York City. Justi-
fying why the authors use the Cooper-Hewitt as
an exemplar, on metropolitan and national levels,
it champions itself as the only museum in the
USA devoted solely to design (Bloemink &
Cunningham 2004). The reputation of the
museum is one of the reasons it was chosen as
the focus of the study. The department provides
quality programmes that engage school audi-
ences in the design process – developing such
skills as active observation, critical discussion,
JADE 29.1 (2010)
strategies for visual communication and critique.
The main purpose of these programmes is to
connect the school curriculum beyond the class-
room. Programmes such as the Summer Design
Institute and a City of Neighborhoods programme
may have become models for design education
in schools and communities across the USA (Lee
2009). Below the authors describe the two
programmes that we referenced above, using
descriptions from the Cooper-Hewitt’s education
brochures (Education Department 2006).
A City of Neighborhoods
A City of Neighborhoods is a community-based
design education and advocacy programme for
youth, educators, designers and civic leaders
working with young people developed by the
Cooper-Hewitt. Its mission is to foster civic
engagement, recognisng the right of all citizens,
especially young people, to be involved in the
design of their neighbourhoods. The programme
applies design education to a neighbourhood
context, providing access to primary resources
(architecture, streetscapes, maps, and historic
and cultural materials) in order to explore a neigh-
bourhood’s past, analyse its present, and plan for
its future.
A City of Neighborhoods was created by archi-
tects and designers and modelled on their own
experiences with the design process. The
programme mirrors the stages in the design proc-
ess, supported by a variety of community- and
project-based strategies. The following three
stages of the workshop form the necessary steps
in translating the design process into successful
civic action. Some of the activities that may be
included in any workshop are described below.
1. Learning to See – Identifying and describing
the ‘experience of place’ using a visual vocabu-
lary, walking tours, sketching, photography, writ-
ing and activities for synthesising sensory impres-
sions.
• Place Memory Activity – Participants create a
representation of a powerful memory of a
place. Participants introduce themselves using
this description/story, showing and describing
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the characteristics of that place which make it 57
important in their memory. Hyun-Kyung Lee and
Mark Breitenberg
• Learning to See Slideshow – Participants are
introduced to the ‘elements of form’ that make
up the language of design, and are asked to
consider the choices that designers and
communities make and how these choices are
reflected in the architecture, urban planning
and landscaping of a place.
• Walking Tour Objectives and Orientation –
Participants break into teams to become
oriented to the walking tour objectives. Team
members assign roles and familiarise them-
selves with equipment, materials and maps.
• Neighborhood Exploration/Walking Tour and
Lunch – Participants are asked to use all five
senses and the elements of form from the
morning’s slideshow to discover the character
of the neighbourhood. Participants record the
design and architectural elements that give the
neighbourhood its unique sense of place by:
taking Polaroids, answering prompt questions,
collecting artefacts, making texture rubbings,
conducting interviews.
• Sensory Collage – What was your experience of
this place? Using the information and resources
collected and experienced in the walk, partici-
pants organise their findings into a visual pres-
entation to share with the rest of the group.
2. Understanding Change Over Time – Analysing
historical maps and photographs, presentations
by guest speakers, discussions involving commu-
nity panels, and researching literature and written
materials.
• Historic Layering Activity – Knowing a neigh-
bourhood’s past is critical to understanding its
present. Participants are asked to consider
what the past and present forces of change
have been. Using maps, narratives, municipal
records and photographs, they add another
layer of historical context to the neighbourhood
collage.
58 • Using Historic Photographs – Writing from
Hyun-Kyung Lee and historic photographs allows time for reflection
Mark Breitenberg on how everyday life in the neighbourhood has
changed over time. It also allows for imagining
alternative living conditions. When considering
life in the past, participants gain perspective,
clarity and insight that inform their knowledge
of the current situation.
• Neighbourhood Panel Discussion – While meet-
ing with representatives from community
groups, participants assess the importance of
perspective on a community’s evolution.
• Defining Design Criteria Discussion – Examin-
ing current social, economic and environmental
issues, participants begin to formulate design
solutions for the neighbourhood. Teams form
around common concerns and project param-
eters are discussed.
3. Designing for Change – Using information
gathered about the past and present to develop
proposals for the future by brainstorming ideas,
interviewing community members, analysing
project sites, sketching designs, building models,
presenting and critiquing proposals, and planning
for future community action.
• Brainstorming and Sketching Activity – Teams
focus on a site or topic of concern, and brain-
storm ideas, go back to their site for sketching,
interviews and observing behaviours, sketch
ideas and plans on base map, Start Building!
Participants build 3-D models of their ideas for
positive community change.
• Team Presentations of Models and Plans – Each
team presents and explains its project to a jury,
to be followed by critique, discussions and
evaluations by the group and community
members. The ultimate goal is to author a
community-based project that participants can
continue to advocate and act upon after the
workshop, as well as feel confident sharing
with youth, in and outside of the classroom.
© 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Designing an Action Plan – Develop activities
for integration into home communities or
curricula with clear learning objectives, defined
resources and activities appropriate for young
people. Develop strategies for implementation
and assessment methods. Create projects that
can build on partnerships between teachers,
youth providers, architects, planners, preserva-
tionists and other community contacts.
• The goal of A City of Neighborhoods workshop
(Education Department 2006) is to help partici-
pants develop strategies and designs to take
back to their schools, community groups, and
other institutions. These designs will reflect
each participant’s unique situation, and engage
and empower community members to advo-
cate for their needs and aspirations.
The Summer Design Institute
For one week every summer at the Cooper-Hewitt,
educators and designers are invited to join an inter-
national roster of renowned designers and design
educators as they share strategies for engaging
K-12 students in the design process. The Summer
Design Institute (SDI) features workshops, master
classes, studio visits, and keynote presentations
that connect the school curriculum beyond the
classroom (Education Department 2006).
Smith (2006) explained that the theme of the
SDI is always ‘Best Practices in Design Educa-
tion’, and sub-themes included the built environ-
ment, technology and innovation, working with
adolescent audiences and experiences from the
classroom. Participants at the institute learn ways
to promote innovation, critical thinking, visual
literacy and problem-solving across the K-12
curriculum. They share activities for engaging K-
12 students in the design process. They work
with advisors to develop action plans and strate-
gies for classroom implementation and alterna-
tive assessment methods. Most importantly, they
experience how architectural, environmental,
product, graphic and media design can enhance
the teaching of mathematics, science, environ-
mental studies, language arts, history and art.
JADE 29.1 (2010)
Case 2: Types of educational programmes
and their characteristics
In our research at the Art Center College of Design
in Pasadena, California, one of the leading design
schools in the world, as well as at peer schools in
the USA and around the world, it is apparent that
the strategies of project- or design-based learning
are also more consistent with the cognitive proc-
esses we attribute to students of the millennial
generation and younger. In other words, these
new forms of learning are a better fit with the way
high school and college students today receive
and process information, and are thus likely to
produce higher success rates. The year-old
Design High School in Los Angeles already
reports significantly higher attendance rates than
the Los Angeles Unified School District average.
The premise of Art Center’s design pedagogy
is learning through problem-solving. Even many
of the foundational skills, such as drawing and
visual form, are taught not just as skills in them-
selves but as ways to conceptualise and commu-
nicate ideas in a particular medium. For example,
a first-term course called ‘Design I’ is devoted to
the elements of visual form in two dimensions:
colour, line, scale and so on. Students are asked
to demonstrate what they have learned by creat-
ing a book, album cover or game (the choice is
theirs) that shows the principles of the class at
work. In this example, the problem to be solved is
how formal principles can be applied in, for exam-
ple, a deck of playing cards to express the
student’s concepts. At most design schools, the
assignment for a similar level foundation course
is simply to create a notebook of independent
sketches; the Art Center assignment is unique in
asking for a coherent project to show these basic
skills. As students advance through the curricu-
lum, the project-based learning classes take on
increasingly complex problems. By the final two
terms, students work primarily in collaborative
studios that are designed to respond to problems
or design ‘briefs’ introduced from outside the
college by major international companies. Or, in
the case of the Advertising department, students
will work in a studio called ‘The Agency’ with real-
world clients. Of course an important advantage
of this approach is to prepare students for their
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professional careers – they are in effect working 59
as professional designers do while still in school. Hyun-Kyung Lee and
But as a form of pedagogy, we have found that Mark Breitenberg
the skills, knowledge and processes of design
are mastered more successfully in this project-
based approach.
Conclusion
We make design decisions that reflect our
personal, social, political, aesthetic and economic
desires. As such, they reflect our ideas and ideals,
and our compromises. The purpose of design
education is to provide a framework for teaching
young people the skills they need to become
active participants in planning and shaping their
world. In looking at the design of cities, students
explore the social, physical and cultural environ-
ments that shape human behaviour. In analysing
visual communication, students decode mean-
ing in the relationship between word and image.
Such assignments integrate skills in the language
arts, art, history and technology. While active
involvement in the design process usually char-
acterises most design-based learning, these
reflective activities are also the foundation for
developing discriminating consumers who make
critical choices in their adult lives.
Ultimately, such examples of programmes,
the Summer Design Institute and A City of Neigh-
borhoods, enable the general public, educators
and youth audiences to understand better design
and its influence on our lives through its
programmes and courses. The quality
programmes may engage school audiences in
the design process – developing such skills as
active observation, critical discussion, strategies
for visual communication and critique. K-12 class-
room teachers will take the design lessons into
their classroom to enhance the study of other
disciplines, such as history, language arts, and
science, ultimately increasing academic perform-
ance and connecting school curriculum to real-
life issues and experiences. The knowledge
acquired through this article may be incorporated
into the development of design education.
Design education needs supports by strategic
investments in networking, preservice training,
and resource dissemination and further research.
60 When they are integrated, design will have a posi- Rayala, M. (2005) Design and architecture high
Hyun-Kyung Lee and tive, catalytic influence on students learning in school, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Journal,
Mark Breitenberg schools and communities. Design educators Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 24–7
need to approach learners as active, and adapt
Smith, C. (2006) Personal communication,
the design process to the world by forming and
17 July
reforming categories and structures that work to
explain the phenomenal world and allow the
learner to interact with it effectively.

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