Starting in the 1990s in South Africa, according to Sauthoff, designers in general and graphic designers in particular have sought to create an inimitable design style that is imbued with a recognisable (South) Afrikan cultural identity. This is in reaction to the entrenched hegemonic influence of Euro-American design practices. Names like Saki Mafundikwa, Karabo Poppy, Garth Walker, and Sindiso Nyoni are on the influential list of designers bracketing a so-called African design aesthetic. How is this ‘aesthetic’ related to design that is culturally significant, according to Twigger Holroyd, and that lends authenticity to an artefact, positioning it as representative of Afrikanness?

Graphic design as an academic and research practice is relatively young when compared to the established disciplines such as education, psychology, medicine, and history. It was only community-type colleges and technical institutions that offered design as a vocational trade. Universities in South Africa started to offer design in the latter half of the twentieth century. It is only in the last two decades that we have seen design research output in South Africa. The relatively low number of international design journals when compared to education, for example, attest to the young scientific discipline of research in design.

Human-Centered Design (HCD) methods have been identified as valuable and effective approaches to designing with and for people, but is also due to complexity and indeterminacy, often difficult to practice. With the popularisation of HCD in contemporary design education, and the subsequent emphasis of human-centered research an ethical question arises as to whether design students are adequately prepared to engage with the type of research that more and more they are expected to conduct.

The  purpose  of  this  paper  is  to  discuss  the  benefits  of  embracing  constructivism  as  a conceptual  basis  for  the practice of teaching and learning in interior design degree programmes;  namely Bachelor of Technology,  and BA Honours offered at many of the institutions in South Africa.
 
Deliberation  is  given  to  using  a  constructivist  approach  to  both  teaching  and  learning, and  as  a  research paradigm to better align the research and practical components of these traditionally vocationally-­orientated, project-based design programmes.   
 

In this paper, we position information architecture design and the thinking skills required for its practice as a practical application of the theory of cyberdesign.

We further suggest that these thinking skills, while commonly applied to digital domains, transcend the digital because, at the cognitive level, the information architect is dealing, first and foremost with indeterminate problems. We describe how information architecture design involves the process of deconstructing dysfunctional formations (problems) and the characteristics of the design applied in the reformulation of parts into a functional reformulation.

This paper presents an analytical autoethnographic reflection on the adaptations in approach to the teaching and learning of literacies that led to the writing and research-intensive literacies programme currently presented to first year visual arts students. It maps our practices to theory, and specifically to those of Freire, Lave and Wenger, Mezirow and the transformational education theorists.

Over the last two decades we have seen the designer‘s role and brief broaden. Through the introduction of the personal computer, the Internet and wireless technology and social networking, we all have experienced dramatic changes, especially in our rapport with space, time, the physicality of objects, and ourselves as individuals. Today, with the expansion in student numbers and a reducing resource in Higher Education how the studio-based design pedagogic community responds and adapts its teaching and learning methodologies in response to these rapid developments and effectively utilises feedback opportunities to inform curriculum is key in ensuring that students understand and are equipped for the profession they are entering.

South African education systems straddle the developed/developing world schism, an old-school-style Eurocentric view has long tussled with an Africanist dialectic. Educators struggle with access and upliftment issues whilst implementing outcomes-based learning programmes and simultaneously maintaining academic standards. At Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), conscious of the need to build future capacity, innovation in teaching and learning is paramount and the issues identified above are constantly under debate. Experimentation is an ongoing aspect of teaching methodology.

One of the central obligations of a post-graduate programme at a university is research. Any research project starts with a research proposal. Therefore one of the central tasks in the training of researchers is mastering the strategies of persuading the overseers of research that the task that the researcher is undertaking is feasible, do-able and worthwhile. To do this act of persuasion the researcher has also to demonstrate that he or she is in all likelihood capable of doing research – this demonstration of competency is built into the proposal. The result of research will be a document like a dissertation.

This paper acknowledges the ongoing process being used in the Jewellery sector to develop an integrated training and development framework. The framework progresses from ABET Level 1 to doctoral qualifications and shows how the various qualifications could link directly to specific occupations within a sector. In doing so, this paper addresses the boundaries between education, training, industry and government. More importantly, it indicates the inclusive process followed to open the gates to enter the new terrain of relevant education and training for sector specific occupations.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the South African jewellery sector is aligning education and training within the government’s educational policy.

There is national and institutional pressure to transform education, to revisit curriculums and approaches to teaching and learning and to address issues around dominant worldviews, inclusiveness and diversity. Visual arts lecturer practitioners, like other academics, are being challenged to respond.

We know that the students entering our programmes, in all their growing diversity, provide new challenges, bringing with them as they do different and often complex social, cultural and familial identities, some of which they leave, wittingly or unwittingly, willingly or unwillingly, at the door, as they look to conform to the expectations of the disciplinary communities.

The Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Johannesburg has diverse departments ranging from Architecture, Fine Arts and Multimedia to five different design disciplines. After years of being housed in geographically dispersed locations the faculty has recently moved into one building, and is in the process of consolidating and rationalizing the teaching programmes. One area of rationalization has been identified as the theory programme, and we have been assigned the task of identifying theoretical material and drawing up a single teaching programme that most departments could subscribe to.

According to Megan Hughes (2006) the generation that educators of the 21st Century have to deal with is referred to as “Generation Y”. They represent the by-product of the previous generation, i.e. the “baby boomers”, who heralded a “surge of new inventions and improvements” (Hughes, 2006), allowing the next generation benefits of improved technology and a much easier life.

“The Y Generation doesn't like hard work, even when it's for its own benefit, and is very much in love with anything that's 'instant'. “(Hughes.2006)

Design educators often adopt teaching and learning methods of a traditional nature. These practices may no longer be effective in the fast-paced world of tomorrow.

The study investigates appropriate approaches to new curriculum development and educational practice at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT).This is necessary in order to ensure success of the multi-cultural student body and facilitate the creation of ethical and culturally unique design solutions by the Bachelors of Technology (BTech) Fashion and Surface Design learners at CPUT.

By using the research dissertations and studio work of six learners as examples, possibilities of best practice and challenges with regard to this diverse context are highlighted, as the success of these learners in the 2006 BTech programme is analysed in a qualitative manner.