Since the mid 1990’s, recurriculation efforts in South Africa have been marked by ideological complexity. Although there is general agreement, post-apartheid, that curriculum should contribute to the construction of a just, equitable and democratic post-apartheid society, the question of how to get there is not straightforward. Broadly speaking, in the new South Africa, curriculum reform has been oriented around a liberal democratic notion of transformation.

The second year Design Studies learning unit “Design and the Construction of Class Distinction” (BA Communication Design, Industrial Design, University of Johannesburg) introduces students to definitions of social class in terms of capitalism (Olin-Wright 2008, Goldthorpe 1980, Crompton 1998, 2003) as well as to Bourdieusian concepts of habitus, field and capital (Bourdieu 1989; Weininger 2005, Bennett, et al 2010; Jenkins 2003; Grenfell 2003).

Design thinking features in post-modern educational literature (Doll 1979, 1986, 1993; Kress 1996; Cope, & Kalantzis 2003) as a construct that purportedly enables educators to prepare students to deal with complexity and „super-complexity‟ (Barnett 1996; 2000; 2003; 2006) when they enter their professions. Although not explicitly stated, post-modern educational literature tends to stress the importance of systems thinking, critical problem solving, cognitive flexibility, abductive and connective reasoning as competences that prepare professionals to also perform optimally within a post-modern cultural situation and in age of information and super-complexity.

This paper proposes design as the guiding pedagogical metaphor for education in the 21st century. Educational reform literature is preoccupied with notions of indeterminacy in relation to learning because of major social changes that have occurred over the last two decades. Globalization, pluriculturalism, informalisation, consumerism, the rise of the network or information/knowledge based society have increasingly become defining markers of these changes.