Exploring Relationships Between Anxieties and Academic Performances in a Cross-Pollinative Design Studio Pedagogy
Liow Zhengping
Singapore Polytechnic
Singapore
Increasing global economic uncertainties and seismic cultural shifts will inevitably result in multifaceted societal challenges and opportunities. Imminent economies are poised to capitalise on the production of knowledge (Powell & Snellman, 2004), technological output and dissemination with the ‘empathy’ economy (Dellot et al., 2019) as a key driver. The paradigm of allowing only expert designers to participate and execute key design decisions must be dismantled, as agencies should be bestowed upon ordinary citizens as human-centred solutions to societal challenges become increasingly important (Design Singapore Council, 2020). The objective of design literacy is, therefore, to inculcate design competencies in which communicating meaning, function, and quality are foundational principles (Nielsen & Brænne, 2013). Pacione (2010) stressed that design literacy is not about building competencies of being an expert designer but is about attaining basic skills in inquiry, evaluation, ideation, sketching, and prototyping. Design must no longer be limited to activities dictated by master designers but critically, as an exploration into how skillsets of design can be woven into everyday affairs by anybody. Design can be contextually fuelled as a process of divergence thinking, as a means of investigating emerging epistemologies belonging to the various design disciplines.
As we harboured dreams of Design Literacy to equip us with the necessary skillsets to reach the desired threshold level of proficiency, the design studio pedagogy (as a process) is rarely challenged. The realisation of Design Literacy is facilitated by a journey, a process of transmitting knowledge, imparting sound value systems through the ‘hidden curriculum’, and the soft skills necessary for the near future, as the Design Studio pedagogy. The article will seek to extend Nielsen and Brænne’s (2013) assertion, which the authors have laid out: ‘In an educational context, design literacy is related to 1) general education (akin to ‘beginning design students’) for citizenship and to the promotion of 2) democratic ideals through 3) participation and dialogue’, as an alternative in recalibrating the asymmetrical power structures of the pervasive Master-and-apprentice one-on-one formative design reviews. The consideration of these three critical ideas establishes the groundwork for the Cross-Pollinative Team Learning (CTL) studio pedagogy. CTL is primarily a reaction to the One-on-One (OOO) Master and Apprentice (M&A) studio pedagogical model, which remained antithetical to developing democratic ideas via active participation and dialogues among beginning design students.
How can educators evaluate the ‘success’ of learners in attaining basic levels of design literacy? How can we ‘define’ the meaning/level of basic competence? Do we only evaluate their academic performance, often at the expense of their mental stability? Would there be a correlation between these two factors? For example, the recent UCL Bartlett fiasco has uncovered decades of abuse, sexism, immense stress, and anxieties spanning more than three decades ago and was primarily attributed to the lack of accountabilities governed by the OOO M&A asymmetrical power structures in the siloed Unit Systems (Howlett Brown, 2022). Being a highly ranked institution, the revelation of the oppressive learning environment exemplifies the concept of ‘Public successes but private failures’. of British Architects). Al-Irhayim (2022), the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) vice-president of students, came to a similar conclusion after visiting various architecture schools.
The oppression is nothing new as the mental well-being of architecture students has been in the design studio for decades (Braaten, 1964), of which chronic anxieties were singled out as a pertinent issue (Kirkpatrick, 2018). The issue of mental well-being in design studios have been sporadically examined in recent years (Gümüşburun Ayalp & Çivici, 2021; Hegenauer, 2018; Jia et al., 2009; Karklins & Mendoza, 2016; Kirkpatrick, 2018; McClean, 2020; SONA, 2022; Stead et al., 2022; Xie et al., 2019). Despite recent revivals, there are still limited empirical studies in the literature on design pedagogy that investigates alternative collaborative pedagogical models. The objective of the investigation is to compare (within and between) the effects of Pedagogy Frameworks’ (OOO versus CTL) on students’ Anxiety Levels and Academic Scores, hypothesising that the CTL students will experience a lower level of anxiety (RQ1) and academically outperform their OOO peers (RQ2) and, finally to explore relationships between students’ levels of anxieties and academic scores (RQ3).
Methodology
The year-long study was designed as a randomised control trial, in which program administrators randomly assigned first-year architecture students to their studios. The school adopts an ‘Integrated approach’ whereby Design, Construction, and Services courses were incorporated into a single project and accessed by a panel of more than five lecturers. The students shared identical design project briefs and joint assessment rubrics in a ‘cohort system’ where their studio peers remained the same for the academic year.
A paper and pen survey, the self-report scale ‘Generalised anxiety disorder-7 (GAD-7)’ (Spitzer et al., 2006), was administered twice at the end of each semester before their grades were released. GAD-7’s Cronbach’s α of 0.92 indicated high internal consistency reliability with good test-retest reliability and good criterion, construct, factorial, and procedural validity. The main question: ‘Over the last two weeks, how often have you been bothered by the following problems?’ sets the overall time frame for the 7-item scale. Participants will answer from 1: Strongly agree to 7: Strongly disagree for sample questions like ‘Not being able to stop or control worrying’ and ‘Feeling afraid as if something awful might happen’. Academic scores for each semester were also collected.
Results and Discussion
[RQ1: Anxiety Levels]: The GAD-7 readings between CTL and OOO students were revealed to be comparable at DP1, with OOO students’ mean of 4.993 and CTL’s 5.481 (p= .0669 through independent t-tests). Interestingly, both groups reported declining GAD-7 readings and yet, CTL students were purportedly reflected to be significantly less anxious than the OOO students, with a mean reading of 4.490 and 5.422, respectively, p= 0.0498. The OOO M&A pedagogy seems to have provided a false sense of security and confidence as the project complexities increased from Semester one to Semester two. The CTL students appear to have established a stable level of social support with the heterarchical CTL studios with a strong P2P component for the students to be socialised with a collaborative ‘hidden curriculum’. Despite the suggested rationales. the stabilities of their GAD-7 reading remained consistent for OOO (m= 4.967 & p= .410) and CTL students (m=5.451 & p= .404).
[RQ2: Academic Performance]: A statistically significant difference reflecting the academic performance of CTL students (m=75.556%) outperforming their OOO peers (m= 63.134%), p= .0007 at DP2. This phenomenon was accelerated by a significant drop in academic scores for OOO students from 69.630% to 63.134%, p= .0031. The decline in academic performance of OOO was evident as their GAD-7 reading took a plunge simultaneously. Even though the P2P studio culture was ubiquitous in studios worldwide (XXX, 2xxx), OOO students are alleged not to have completely developed the flair and comfortableness at cross-critiquing their peers compared to the heterarchical immersion in the CTL studios.
[RQ3: Relationship between Anxiety and Academic Performance]: The Pearson correlation highlighted the weak and negative correlation coefficient between GAD-7 and Academic scores for OOO students at 0.196 and -0.246 for DP 1 and DP2, respectively. In contrast, the coefficients of the CTL students reflected a moderate correlation of 0.363 and 0.527 at DP1 and DP2, respectively. Limitations: A previous GAD-7 reading should have been done right at the beginning of semester one. A baseline reading of GAD-7 of the students before being potentially affected by stress in the design studio could have provided a more accurate analysis.
Conclusion
This study highlights the importance and urgency of safeguarding students’ mental well-being, the potential of the hierarchical CTL pedagogy’s favourable implication for academic performances and a call to action, as evidenced by an empirical study to nudge educators to reconsider our pedagogical approach that departs from the authoritarian M&A OOO studios. Education is consequently about character development, empowerment, enabling, and the transformation of the individual so that they can intervene in this world. (Till, 2018).
References
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Liow Zhengping (Ping) is a Lecturer in Architecture & a PhD student in Singapore and has been developing his keen interest in architectural education through his research. He positions his studies at the intersection of educational psychology, design studio pedagogy, and cross-pollinative team learning (CTL) strategies with a focus on dismantling the asymmetrical power structures of the studio’s Hidden Curriculum. He has delivered guest lectures and spoken at numerous international conferences since 2016. He was recently awarded the ‘Best Research Paper’ for his manuscript titled I can and I will: a study of ‘grit’ in a collaborative team learning studio pedagogical culture presented at the Design Research Society’s LXD 2021 International Conference for Design Educators. Ping envies cats because they appear to get more sleep than he does!
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