Design education, reflective practice and design research

A new, non-professional, undergraduate program of study concerned with design in the built environment has been introduced at the University of Sydney, Australia. The focus is on learning to design that is the process of designing and not the end product of that process. The development of the program was based on the results of research into the design process and related research in a number of fields. The paper discusses how this knowledge was used both to structure the program of study and the learning situations and processes involved in implementing that structure.