Enabling knowledge progression in vocational curricula: Design as a case study

Abstract

The Cape Peninsula University of Technology’s Design Foundation Course (DFC) has as its purpose to give talented but underprepared students epistemological accessto the general field of design as well as to a range of specific design disciplines. Inorder to design curricula that enable epistemological access we argue that educatorsneed to make explicit what makes their knowledge practices special. Drawing onresearch into levels of design expertise as well as Legitimation Code Theory, this paper offers a theoretical and analytical framework that accounts for progression inlevels of expertise, forms of knowledge and the cultivation of a designer gaze. Theanalysis of the DFC curriculum briefs reveals that design expertise develops throughthe engagement between increasingly more context-dependent design problems andincreasingly complex design concepts. The paper concludes by drawing on the designcase for a set of principles which can inform the progression of knowledge invocational curricula more generally.