Conference Agenda

Design education in higher education institutions (HEI) is evolving in response to social, economic, political, and ecological change. This shift reflects a new educational paradigm that requires an understanding of the complexity and ambiguity of contemporary work life brought about by systemic change (Mavri, Ioannou and Loizides 2020; Redström 2020; Pontis and van der Waarde 2020). Within design education, systemic change requires rethinking both what is taught and how education anticipates and responds to evolving societal, economic, political, ecological, and professional contexts.

Traditionally, design education has prioritized technical skills, proficiency in tools and software, and a strong understanding of visual aesthetics and design principles (Conway, Masters and Thorold 2017; Davis and Dubberly 2023; Formosa 2025). However, the emergence of a post-digital world, the integration of advanced artificial intelligence tools, and the growing prevalence of complex, wicked problems have fundamentally reshaped professional design practice and employment (Silver and Ruokamo 2025). Design problems and their potential solutions are increasingly ill-defined, and designers’ roles vary significantly across projects and contexts (Dubberly 2017). As Lee (2024: 170) notes, the object of design has shifted “beyond product,” focusing more on activating and supporting individual and collective action than on production. In the context of systemic change, designers are therefore required to engage with challenges that span multiple industries and societal domains.

Design educators are under increasing pressure to integrate multidisciplinary content, address systemic challenges, and equip students with ethical and anticipatory thinking skills (Wang, Wu and Gutierrez 2024; Cesinger and Dittenberger 2025; Lee 2024). According to Pontis and van der Waarde (2020: 241), design education is shifting away from standardized teaching models toward more personalized approaches, in which students become “the authors, drivers, and assessors of their learning experience,” while educators adopt supervisory roles. At the same time, educators are expected to maintain core disciplinary competencies while responding to new demands such as systems thinking, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and inclusivity. This expanded role is also articulated in Irwin’s (2015) concept of transition design, which emphasizes designing with an understanding of the interconnectedness of social, economic, political, and ecological systems.

In response to systemic change, several scholars have called for a rethinking of how design is taught in higher education (Pontis and van der Waarde 2020; Formosa 2025; Ornekoğlu-Selçuk et al. 2024; Wang, Wu and Gutierrez 2024). Rather than focusing narrowly on tools or aesthetics, future-oriented design education is increasingly expected to emphasize a deeper understanding of the design process, problem framing, and research integration (Lee 2024; Kunrath et al. 2020; Daae and Cash 2021).

While previous research has examined changes in the design field (Noel et al. 2023; Mortati 2022; Zhou et al. 2025; Silver and Ruokamo 2025; Davis and Dubberly 2023), less attention has been paid to how design educators themselves interpret and respond to these transformations. Yet educators play a critical role in shaping the future of the profession, and their lived experiences and meaning-making processes remain underexplored. To address this gap, this study draws on the concept of sensemaking. Originally developed by Weick (1995) in organizational studies, sensemaking refers to the ongoing process through which individuals interpret complex and ambiguous situations and act upon those interpretations. In higher education, this perspective highlights how educators draw on professional values, experiences, and social interactions to navigate uncertainty and reframe their roles in changing contexts.

The study addresses the following research questions:
How do design educators make sense of systemic change in the context of higher education and the evolving design field?
How does sensemaking influence their roles and practices as change agents within the framework of transition design?

My doctoral thesis will research from the perspective of the university teacher, the nature and occurrence of interactional, dialogic discourse in face-to-face teaching, and the factors that support its emergence. Specifically, it examines how university teachers’ verbal practices and interactional strategies foster exploratory talk, conceptualized as a shared, dialogic mode of thinking that models disciplinary reasoning and processes of knowledge construction for students.

Research material data comprises teaching and interview material collected from four Finnish university teachers (two men and two women) representing two faculties, who provided lecture-based instruction during the academic years 2023-2024. All courses were meant for bachelor-level students. Basically I videorecorded at the very beginning of the course, around at the mid-point, and then at the end of the course – this was the minimum – in order to be able to see the development in relations between the teacher and the students, but also among students themselves.

A total of 19 lecture sessions were video-recorded and subsequently transcribed for analysis. The data of lectures includes 24 hours, 59 minutes, and 49 seconds of videorecorded material, amounting to 1,142,310 characters, 156,444 words, and the equivalent of 279 A4 pages.

In addition, each instructor participated in two semi-structured interviews, conducted before and after the lecture course. The audio-recorded interview corpus consists of 8 interview sessions, totaling 5 hours, 16 minutes, and 11 seconds of audio material, corresponding to 258,144 characters, 39,731 words, and 66 A4 pages of transcribed text.

Altogether, the full data contains 30 hours and 16 minutes of recorded material, comprising 1,400,454 characters, 196,175 words, and 345 A4 pages.

The starting point for my study has been what is frequently referred to as sociocultural theory, according to which language is a way of thinking that is both individual and collective. The analysis is based on Vygotsky’s sociocultural (or, cultural-historical; Vygotsky, 1978) thinking, in particular on the essential role of the language but also the concepts of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) and scaffolding. The analysis is also guided by Bakhtin’s (1981) notions of dialogism and multivoicedness. The background material for the study consists of previous studies of the impact of interactional dialogical speech used by teachers to foster learning, the development of common knowledge, and student motivation for learning. From the previous studies, Mercer’s (2000) differentiation of cumulative and exploratory talk is used as the theoretical framework as well, complementing aspects from Alexander’s (2008; 2020) dialogic teaching and Wells’s (1999) view of inquiry as collaborative knowledge-building.

Mercer (2000) distinguishes three kinds of talk between a teacher and learners, and between learners: disputational talk (heavy disagreement, even disputes), cumulative talk (building solidarity by uncritically adding ideas) and exploratory talk, in which participants critically but constructively engage with ideas, give reasons, and invite justification. Exploratory talk is collaborative and accountable: it advances reasoning through shared warrants and explicit evaluation of claims. Exploratory talk is marked by visible reason-giving, joint evaluation, and co-ownership of conclusions; in the episode, whose analysis I offer as paper, the teacher’s strategies move the interaction along precisely this trajectory in the direction of exploratory talk.

This focal episode is a brief university classroom exchange in which a student tentatively articulates distinctions among certain key terms of the lecture and the discipline, and the teacher responds by validating, elaborating, and recontextualizing these distinctions with reference to the debates of the discipline she teaches.

The study will bring some new information about the university teacher’s operations in dialogic discourse. There are only few researches on this topic specifically from the perspective of university pedagogy. See, however, Atwood et al. (2010).

Indigenous education research has been profoundly shaped by Western imperialism, with dominant research paradigms historically embedded in colonial power relations and Western epistemologies (Smith, 2012). Much of the existing international scholarship has emerged from settler-colonial contexts such as Canada, Australia, the United States, and New Zealand, where distinct settler populations displaced Indigenous peoples in the pursuit of territorial sovereignty. Within these contexts, extensive theoretical and empirical work has examined Indigenous education and cross-cultural teacher collaboration. However, the applicability of these frameworks to societies operating through different colonial mechanisms remains underexamined. Contexts characterized by multiple and layered colonial histories—without a single, coherent settler population—raise distinct questions regarding power, knowledge, and educational authority that cannot be fully addressed through dominant settler-colonial literature alone.

Taiwan represents such an undertheorized context. Taiwan is home to sixteen officially recognized Indigenous nations, comprising approximately 2.3% of the national population, alongside Plains Indigenous groups whose official recognition remains contested. These communities have experienced successive colonial regimes, including Dutch, Spanish, Qing, Japanese, and Chinese Nationalist rule. Rather than a single regime replacing another, these historical layers have produced a complex colonial formation in which Indigenous knowledge, identity, and sovereignty have been continually reshaped within processes of nation-building, cultural governance, and education.

In Taiwan's urban schools, Indigenous students often constitute less than two percent of the student population. Indigenous knowledge remains institutionally marginalized and is frequently positioned as supplementary cultural content rather than as a foundational epistemological framework (Nesterova, 2019). Recent Indigenous education policies mandate the inclusion of Indigenous languages, histories, and cultures across school curricula; however, these mandates have been implemented without corresponding professional development infrastructure (Nesterova, 2019). Prior research has shown that non-Indigenous teachers in Taiwan often lack sufficient understanding of Indigenous peoples and cultures, leading to stereotypical interpretations and deficit-oriented expectations toward Indigenous students (Yen, 2009).

These conditions exemplify broader theoretical challenges in multiply colonized contexts where settler-colonial frameworks, premised on binary Indigenous-settler relations, inadequately capture the complexity of teacher positionality and epistemic authority. In urban contexts where Indigenous students represent an extreme numerical minority, non-Indigenous teachers encounter fundamental epistemic asymmetries when curriculum content requires engagement with Indigenous epistemological frameworks outside their professional training. This study argues that professional anxiety emerging under such conditions should not be understood simply as implementation failure, but signals teachers' growing awareness of the limits of their professional authority and epistemic positioning. Rather than treating professional anxiety as a deficit, this research conceptualizes it as a potentially generative condition for professional learning.

Drawing on a two-year collaborative action research project (2023–2024) involving two Han Taiwanese teachers and two Indigenous educators (Kavalan and Paiwan) in an urban elementary school in northern Taiwan, the study examines how sustained cross-cultural teacher co-planning enables teachers to traverse professional anxiety. Building on Donald's (2012) concept of ethical relationality, the collaborative process challenged teachers' conventional positioning as curriculum experts. Through sustained relational engagement, Indigenous knowledge came to be positioned as authoritative in curriculum decisions. This repositioning emerged through teachers' ongoing confrontation with the limits of their Han-centric pedagogical expertise. The study addresses three research questions: (1) How do Han Taiwanese and Indigenous teachers experience and navigate professional anxiety during collaborative Indigenous curriculum development? (2) What pedagogical and relational practices emerge when teachers work across epistemic differences? (3) How does sustained collaboration reshape teachers' understanding of their professional knowledge and its limitations? This study contributes empirical insights to international Indigenous education scholarship by examining teacher collaboration in multiply colonized urban contexts.

Education is fundamental for individual empowerment, community development, and societal progress. It equips individuals with essential skills and knowledge, while fostering social cohesion and economic resilience. In rural areas, ensuring access to quality education is crucial, as it has the potential to break cycles of poverty and marginalization. Schools play a central role in these communities, not just as places of learning, but as hubs for social interaction and opportunity. From a societal perspective, keeping children in school and supporting their educational success builds a more equitable and sustainable future for all. India provides a relevant and critical context for studying sociological connections in education given the country’s vast diversity and deeply entrenched inequalities (Nambissan & Rao, 2012). Rural schools in India share similarities with those globally, such as remote location, minimal infrastructure and resources, sparse population, and multi-grade teaching (Lamb & Glover, 2014; Wang & Shen, 2022; Kalaoja & Pietarinen, 2009). However, the unique interplay of caste, class and religious stratification, experienced more acutely in rural areas, shapes India’s educational landscape, adding complexity to the difficult teaching and learning circumstances of rural schools (Ganguly & Kadam, 2016; Madan, 2019).
Oversight of the unique circumstances of rural schools in educational decision-making is a globally experienced phenomenon, including in Finland. Even though the physical, social and pedagogical realities of schools differ significantly based on their location, population size, learners’ family backgrounds etc., educational discourse often considers schools as homogenous teaching and learning spaces (Kalaoja & Pietarinen, 2009). The potential for transformation in rural schools underscores a critical need for support through policy initiatives, school-level interventions, and development programs worldwide. Unfortunately, many programs are designed in isolation, overlooking the ground realities of the very communities they aim to serve (Funnel & Rogers, 2011). Hence, recognizing and addressing the underlying mental models—deeply ingrained assumptions and beliefs—of community stakeholders is an essential part of transformative work (Senge, 1990).
Schools as Learning Organization (SLO) model is increasingly advocated by scholars (Fullan, 1995; Senge, 2012; Kools & Stoll, 2016; Harris & Jones, 2018) to ensure school effectiveness based on its emphasis on shared goals and vision, individual and collective learning of all members, and a culture of continuous inquiry and feedback (Kools & Stoll, 2016). It is a wholistic, cross-cutting, and action-oriented model that has found use in designing interventions as well as assessing the effectiveness of schools (Bowen et al., 2007; Silins, Mulford & Zarins, 2004). However, the research base of SLOs is limited to affluent urban contexts in the global North and does not necessarily suit the circumstances of rural school settings (Harris et al., 2006). Furthermore, narratives about teaching and learning in low-SES contexts often adopt a ‘deficit model’, i.e., focusing on obstacles rather than opportunities (Sowton, 2021). It gives rise to the need for a framework that leverages the strengths and resilience of rural contexts through appreciative inquiry in addition to addressing their specific needs and challenges.
This qualitative study employs a participatory approach to explore the mental models and practices of school stakeholders (students, teachers, parents, and local administrators across 8 rural schools in lower Himalayas) that facilitate or hinder the development of rural schools into learning organizations.
The study aims to investigate the perceptions and practices of stakeholders in low-SES rural Indian schools that contribute towards organizational learning, and highlight their need for support.

Research Questions

1. What ongoing school practices in rural Indian schools can be linked to the dimensions of Learning Organizations?

1. How do different stakeholders perceive their school’s needs in order to build and improve the learning community?