DesignEd Asia Conference 2012 Hong Kong

Dates: 4-5 December 2012
Location: Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
Website: http://www.designedasia.com
Deadline for abstract submissions: 05 August 2012

Call for papers: “Into Design Education”

Jointly organised by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design, Hong Kong Design Institute (member of VTC Group) and Hong Kong Design Centre, the DesignEd Asia Conference provides a practical platform to bring international design educators and professionals together to share views, knowledge and experiences on Design Education. It is a key event under the program of Business of Design Week (BODW). The BODW is Asia’s most significant international design event organised by Hong Kong Design Centre, and supported by Create Hong Kong, and HK Trade Development Council of the Government of the Hong Kong SAR.

This year we are calling for paper submissions under the theme “Into Design Education” covering ideas and techniques from other fields of knowledge and processes into design education.

Within different cultural and historical contexts, design has been conceived as an art, as a hard science, as a social science, as a political tool, as an economic sector, as a technical field, and any number of other ways of framing this complex and multidisciplinary realm of human endeavor. The way in which one chooses to frame design has broad implications for the pedagogical approaches that one applies to the teaching of design. The cognitive frameworks, teaching methodologies, research methodologies, vocabularies and value systems of different fields are thus absorbed into design education, and play a profound role in shaping students’ views of the designer’s way of engaging the world.

The characteristics of each of these framings are also in constant flux, as sociological agendas for instance shift from patriarchal to participatory, and dominant technologies shift from mechanized mass production to peer-to-peer social networking. The evolution of design – and of design education – can be recounted in terms of different positions taken vis a vis other areas of human knowledge and activity.

We are seeking papers that critically explore relevant contemporary practice in the appropriation of ideas and techniques from other fields of knowledge and action into design education, and which provide an understanding of these practices within their cultural and historical contexts. We invite submission of papers addressing the following five broad themes:

•      From the social sciences into design education
•      From the hard sciences into design education
•      From the arts and culture into design education
•      From business into design education
•      From production into design education

While we expect that papers will be grounded in actual pedagogical practice, papers should also address theoretical issues of the impetus for adopting a given approach into design, the value and consequences brought to design education by such adoption, as well as the value and consequences for these other fields from which design is borrowing.

Abstract Submission Due: 5 August 2012

Abstract Review and Notification: 10 September 2012