Reading 1: Cross

1. Cross states that traditionally design teachers are firstly designers and teachers by coincidence. Teachers in general however should be teachers first and “only secondly, if at all, specialists in any field”.  “The main distinction lies in the difference between the instrumental, or extrinsic, aims that specialist education usually has, and the intrinsic aims that general education must have.  What are the extrinsic aims of design education?
2. Cross quotes Ryle (1949) in his writing that the difference between being educated and being highly trained is a matter of “knowing how” versus “knowing that”. If this can result in a designer that is very skilled but that also have little cognition of what they are doing, how does design education avoid that paradox?
3. Is the phrase “further research is needed” applicable to design research if the process of design is solution oriented? Once we reach a solution how do we know we need to go further?

Reading 2: Verbeke:

1. Verbeke, like Cross, notes that design school teaching staff are typically practitioners within the field. Is this common across all professional degree types?  Or, is this unique to design education programs?
2. Verbeke analyzes Ranulph Ganville’s declaration that there cannot be research without design. Ganville concludes that it is “impossible to make design subject to the rules of research, when research itself is only possible because of design”.  If the tools of research had to be designed before research could be done, does that mean that design is validated as research?
3. “So, the key issue for developing architectural research is to incorporate practice and design studio work into it. Instead of simply research ‘on’ architecture, researchers should try to establish research ‘in the medium’ of architecture”. What kinds of design problems would require both types of research?