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In June 2026, Edinburgh hosted the largest ever Design Research Society (DRS) Conference. I was struck by both the scale and the energy of the conversations taking place. As one of the track chairs for the Design Education research stream, alongside Ricardo Sosa (New Zealand) and Violeta Clemente (Portugal), I had the opportunity to engage intimately with thirty papers across five sessions, representing one of the largest clusters at the conference.<\/p>\n
What emerged from those discussions ultimately became the basis for our editorial,\u00a0Design education in its teenage years: Growth with tensions<\/em>. The title came from a metaphor that felt increasingly appropriate as we worked through the papers. Design education research today reminds me of a teenager: growing rapidly, developing new perspectives, questioning authority, testing boundaries and occasionally making decisions that leave observers both proud and perplexed.<\/p>\n This is an exciting moment for the field. Across the papers, I observed a growing confidence in tackling major societal challenges and educational questions. At the same time, many familiar tensions remain. We are embracing new ideas while still relying on established frameworks. We are broadening our perspectives while continuing to draw heavily on a relatively familiar canon. We are becoming more ambitious in our aspirations but are not always providing the methodological detail or actionable findings needed to support educators in practice.<\/p>\n What stood out most strongly was a shift in what we think design education is for.<\/p>\n For many years, discussions centred on skills, knowledge transfer and professional preparation. While those concerns remain important, the papers presented in Edinburgh suggested a broader ambition. Increasingly, design education is concerned with helping students develop judgement, ethical awareness, care, systems thinking and the ability to navigate uncertainty. Design education is becoming less about training people to perform tasks and more about supporting them to become thoughtful and responsible designers.<\/p>\n This was particularly evident in the papers focused on creativity and identity. Rather than treating creativity as an innate gift or identity as something students arrive with fully formed, researchers explored how both emerge through experience, relationships and educational practice. Studio environments, teaching approaches, embodied learning experiences and interactions with peers all play a role in shaping who students become as designers.<\/p>\n The emphasis on becoming rather than simply learning feels significant. It reflects a growing recognition that design education is not only about what students know, but also about how they think, how they act and how they position themselves within society.<\/p>\n Reflection was another dominant theme. Reflective practice has long been considered fundamental to design education, yet the papers in this session encouraged us to think more carefully about how reflection actually happens. Reflection is not automatic. It requires carefully designed conditions, meaningful prompts, productive disruptions and opportunities for dialogue. Some of the most compelling work demonstrated that reflection is often at its most powerful when it is social rather than solitary.<\/p>\n I was also encouraged by the growing attention to systems, ethics and responsibility. Across themes ranging from sustainability and health to urban futures and leadership, researchers are increasingly positioning design as a practice of navigating complexity rather than solving neatly bounded problems. The focus is shifting away from quick solutions towards understanding relationships, consequences and responsibilities. Ethics is no longer appearing as an additional topic within the curriculum. It is becoming woven into the fabric of design education itself.<\/p>\n Equally important was the growing prominence of discussions around cultures and knowledges. Some of the most thought-provoking papers challenged long standing assumptions about whose knowledge is represented within design education. Contributions from researchers working in diverse geographical and cultural contexts demonstrated the value of moving beyond a predominantly Western perspective. While there is still much work to do, I left Edinburgh feeling optimistic about the increasing visibility of plural and locally grounded ways of knowing.<\/p>\n Of course, no discussion of design education in 2026 would be complete without acknowledging artificial intelligence. AI was present throughout the conference, but what interested me was that the most insightful conversations were rarely about the technology itself. Instead, they focused on what AI reveals about creativity, judgement, authorship, expertise and education. Again and again, researchers pointed towards the continued importance of human capacities: contextual reasoning, ethical decision making, reflection and care.<\/p>\n At the same time, one concern remained visible across many papers. As a field, we still need to strengthen how we communicate our research. Methodological transparency remains uneven, making it difficult for readers to understand exactly how studies were conducted and how findings were generated. If design education research is to continue maturing, we need research that is not only interesting but also rigorous, transferable and actionable.<\/p>\n Looking back on DRS2026, I am reminded why I find design education such a fascinating area of scholarship. It sits at the intersection of learning, creativity, ethics, technology and social change. It is a field that is continually questioning itself and reimagining its purpose.<\/p>\n Like the teenager of our editorial metaphor, design education research has not yet reached full maturity. It remains unfinished, occasionally contradictory and sometimes frustrating. Yet those characteristics are also signs of growth. What I saw in Edinburgh was a field learning to live with uncertainty, plurality and care. Rather than resolving every tension, design education research is beginning to recognise those tensions as productive conditions for its future development.<\/p>\n And perhaps that is exactly what growing up looks like.<\/p>\n If you feel like reading the editorial, download it at: https:\/\/dl.designresearchsociety.org\/drs-conference-papers\/drs2026\/editorials\/47\/<\/a><\/p>\n Least but not last: LxD2027 https:\/\/www.learnxdesign2027.com<\/a>, our very own DRS Design Education conference is going to happen in September 2027 in Istanbul. I am truly looking forward to it.<\/p>\n From right, Koray Gelmez, chair for https:\/\/www.learnxdesign2027.com<\/a>, Derek Jones, chair for DRS EDSig, DRS conference track chairs Violeta Clemente (also chair for https:\/\/www.lxd2025.com<\/a>) Nicole Lotz and Ricardo Sosa.<\/p>\n In June 2026, Edinburgh hosted the largest ever Design Research Society (DRS) Conference. I was struck by both the scale and the energy of the conversations taking place. As one of the track chairs for the Design Education research stream, alongside Ricardo Sosa (New Zealand) and Violeta Clemente (Portugal), I had the opportunity to engage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-design-comment","category-design-education","category-design-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6656"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6662,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6656\/revisions\/6662"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/DRS2026_chairs.jpg\")
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