Abstract
This thesis proposes a new methodological framework or model for delivering a design curriculum in the Vocational Education and Training sector in Australia. The purpose of the framework is to facilitate the transitional change in design education from a conventional skills-based behaviourist training model to a model that provides appropriate cognitive development required for contemporary design praxis. As such it presents a challenge to established VET educational practices and culture. The research specifically aims to enhance an educational situation by understanding its practices. It investigates and analyses the experiences of Fashion Design teachers in a Vocational Education and Training setting who have effectively used post-structuralist approaches to contexturalise their praxis appropriate to contemporary design outcomes. The research demonstrates how an educational framework can be developed in fashion design that would have broader application in design disciplines generally in the VET sector. It proposes that, with appropriate regard to conditions, processes, and practices, it is possible for educational practitioners using conventional VET approaches to skills-based experiential learning to change to an informed constructivist approach that provides emerging new designers with praxis attributes that• Recognise the social, political, commercial, and historical context of Design and the impact of cultural materialism and cultural relativism as dynamic influences in contemporary commercial design,
• Provide an understanding of the effect of changing technologies on the way future designers may engage in their practice, and
• Establishes the ability to use creative processes to effectively interpret and communicate innovative responses to diverse individual needs of clients. Institutions focussed on Vocational Education and Training outcomes are expected to find the proposed theoretical model of value for possible deployment in their own design curricula. Educators within those institutes, specifically those involved in constructing contemporary relevance for fashion design education, would also find interest in the model. The model is also expected to have relevance to those involved in other disciplines of design education in VET settings. The thesis also includes an extensive critical review of the development of design and design education over time from modernism to a Postmodernity, hyper modern context.
| Date of Award | 2000 |
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| Original language | English |