Enjeux d'une approche didactique de l'enseignement du design: les exemples suisses et français

Abstract

Studying the way design is taught means identifying indicators specific to the phenomena of the transmission of knowledge and know-how of conceptual creation, situations, environments, contexts, as well as the teachers’ and learners’ approaches to creativity and learning. This article proposes a didactic point of view by comparing the curricula of design teaching in two countries, Switzerland and France, in terms of its ambivalent positioning between arts and technology, project culture, evaluation situations, general or specific teaching, but also teacher training. This approach reveals differences that can be attributed to cultural legacies, disciplinary history and pedagogical influences. Similarities also emerge, such as the hesitation within the curricula surrounding the place and identity of the discipline in training institutions. Above all, the common denominator between the two systems under review, over and beyond any formal divergences, is the approach to creative conceptual processes and project-based pedagogy. It could be argued that learning to design is learning to better understand the challenges of the complex world by drawing on the resources of creative experience in the fields of technology and art. Ultimately, the aim of this paper is to contribute to a disciplinary epistemology which looks beyond the origins of design to lay the foundations of conceptual creation, or even of design itself, by identifying the knowledge that circulates from the creative and conceptual environments to the design learning environments.