Student-centric reflections: A discussion of reflexive practice factors 

Reflection is a crucial step in developing a critical designer. This conversation probes traditional methods of facilitating reflections in design education and discusses future reflective practices, particularly in a time where students can use generative Artificial Intelligence software to quickly produce “reflective” essays. There were five design educators involved in this Conversation. They range from new lecturers to a professor, and represented architecture and interior design, branding and strategy design, communication design, co-design, and web design disciplines. We conducted the Conversation over four months, with two long-form discussions and 13 short-form discussions. Long-form conversations explored university student learning experiences and the diversity of different learning experiences across a Bachelor of Design course. Short-form discussions reflected on the contents produced during the long-form discussions to contextualise and identify factors that may indicate students’ application of their reflective learnings (i.e. their reflexive practices). Our conversational reflections identified that to scaffold future design curriculum with reflexive practices, design educators need to consider intrinsic skills, such as confidence and self-awareness, and extrinsic skills, such as communication and the application of reflected learnings.

keywords: reflective practice; reflexivity; student-centred

• with: Emily Wright, Jane Connory, Simone Taffe, Alison De Kruiff
• year: April 2023 – January 2024
• for: LearnxDesign 2023 Conference, Design Research Society
• download: Article