Designing a design curriculum: British schools, 1988 – present
The deadline for 2012 Doctoral College Studentships has now passed.
The Brighton Doctoral College is pleased to welcome applications from self-funded or externally sponsored students for programmes of research in this or a closely related area, beginning from September 2012. Applications are welcome from students wishing to study full time or part time, and applications are welcome from students in employment who have the support of their employers.
- Based in the Faculty of Arts
- Supervisors: Dr Catherine Moriarty; Dr Lesley Whitworth; Professor Avril Loveless.
Application deadline
The university cannot guarantee that students can start at their requested date unless deadlines are met.
- UK/EU students: The deadline for the university to receive applications for an entry date of October is the 1 August, for January entry it is the 1 November and for May it is the 1 March.
- International students: The deadline for the university to receive applications for an entry date of October is the 1 June, for January entry it is the 1 September and for May it is the 1 January.
The present economic crisis has renewed the intensity of debate surrounding issues of creativity, innovation, and design education broadly conceived.
It is also a topic with a considerable historic pedigree. It is therefore striking that the period that ushered in the National Curriculum has received little sustained attention from educational scholars.
The University of Brighton Design Archives, located in the Faculty of Arts, contain the records of the Design Council’s involvement with the preparation and launch of design-related components of the National Curriculum. It also encompasses evidence and evaluation of many initiatives undertaken by schools in conjunction with the national body charged with design promotion, and of design education as actually delivered over the following decades. This is source material that has scarcely been tapped for research into this important field.
The Faculty seeks PhD proposals that explore design education during the past twenty-five years. We seek a project that will make effective use of the extensive primary documentation that is available here, relating to the area of design curriculum development in British schools.
The intention is to explore the history of design education in this recent period - particularly debates about its proximity to other curriculum areas and the role of technology – and to see how these might inform current thinking about design education in the 21st century.
The cross-university supervisory team draws on expertise in the fields of design history and education, and the project showcases resources and researchers working in fields where the University has a distinctive and longstanding reputation, and which remain central to its portfolio.
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