The study revealed that design sensibility and awareness are mostly taught in Indian schools through decorative arts, skill-based vocational training, or through technical or artistic education.
A researcher from the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, presented a protocol for teaching design education in schools at the Seventeenth International Conference on Design Principles and Practises, which was recently held in Lisbon, Portugal.
The idea of designing education in schools is in line with initiatives being made at the school level in other nations throughout Europe, North America, and Japan, according to Priyanka Sewhag Joshi of Haryana, a member of an Army and Air Force family.
“Though design has existed in myriad forms in India since ancient times, a focused approach towards design education began in 1961, with the establishment of the National Institute of Design (NID) at Ahmedabad,” remarked Priyanka.
Deeply influenced by German pedagogy from the Bauhaus and Ulm, the Indian design education initiative seamlessly combines western pedagogical principles with the social ethos of India, she continued.
According to Priyanka, design is today explicitly taught at the undergraduate, master's, and doctoral levels in Indian universities, in addition to hundreds of small design colleges that provide post-high school vocational certifications and certificates.
Now NID is conducting research on frameworks towards the introduction of formal design education at the school level across India,” said Priyanka.
The Seventeenth International Conference on Design Principles and Practises in Lisbon featured the paper presentation Crafting Design Education- Connecting Regional Crafts with Design Education at Schools, which demonstrated how indigenous crafts can be used to teach design to students as a subject in middle school design education.
Her creation of the framework is a component of the action research project that she has been working on for the past five years under the direction of Professor Vijai Singh Katiyar of the NID in Ahmedabad.
Joshi's field study, Contextual relevance of Design Education—The Indian Context, published in 2020 in The International Journal of Design Education, served as the foundation for her research.
According to the study, design sensitivity and awareness are usually taught in Indian schools through ornamentation, skill-based vocational training, or other forms of artistic or technical education.
“The efforts of design education being rooted in thought, history, tradition and culture have largely resulted in the subject being either theory-oriented or as an experience without any design thinking involved in the process,” comments Priyanka.
With the suggestions of the National Education Policy 2020 set forward by the Government of India, Joshi has developed a Tree model of Content & Method for Design Education Curriculum at the School Level.
The model provides a summary of the subject matter and the instructional strategies. Joshi developed an interdisciplinary research framework for design education that depicts three possible paths for lesson preparation, a pedagogical strategy, and the learning goals of design education through crafts in India.
*Image Source: The Indian Express