Xiaoyu Li
Shandong University of Arts & Design
Jinan, China
This article aim is to conceptualize how academics in design field might incorporate international design literacy in their courses. That is, to take the concept of the international understanding of education (reference) as an important future design literacy area. The context for exploring this areas has been prompted by today’s complex and ever-changing world pattern with constant contradictions and conflicts. These question like like these have been used to explore how we might approach international design literacy.
- What positive educational explorations and practices can design education carry out in promoting intercultural understanding and peaceful and friendly development?
- What kind of knowledge should be incorporated and cultivated to support development of international design literacy?
With the international coexistence model (reference) brought about by the cross-border flow of people, wealth and goods around the world has become an unavoidable reality. Country specific initiatives such the China’s “Belt and Road” (reference) are contributing towards international exchanges and cooperation between countries. The international exchanges and cooperation has become an important topic that needs to taken-up by professional fields beyond those of politics, economics and management. I will argue that whether it is domestic or international cooperation, for the graduates, including design, it is necessary for them develop a more open spirit of international cooperation than ever before.
I will consider the UNESCO’s idea of international understanding education as an important design literacy. The International understanding education refers to educational activities aimed at promoting mutual understanding and respect among people from different countries and social and cultural backgrounds in the world, so as to achieve world peace (reference). Under the background of the two world wars and the continuous Cold War, conflict and violence, competition for interests and resources, and power politics, which have brought heavy disasters to the people of the world and yearned for the desire to pursue world peace. These ideas have been advocated by the International Bureau of Education and officially proposed by the 18th General Assembly of UNESCO in 1974.
As an advocate of the concept of international understanding of education, the International Bureau of Education’s goals and visions are to serve education and serve the mutual understanding between peoples of all countries. Since the establishment of UNESCO in 1946, the theme of promoting peace has been mentioned in Recommendations, such as “The Cultivation of the Spirit of International Understanding in Youth and the Teaching of Related International Organizations” (1948), “Geography Teaching as a Tool for Developing International Understanding” (1949), “International Mutual Exchange of Teachers” (1950) and “Education for International Understanding as an Integral Part of School Curriculum and Life” (1968). At the same time, it advocates the incorporation of international understanding education into all fields of education.
However, since the concept of international understanding education was put forward, the implementation of international understanding education have not achieved its goal of promoting world peace as advocated by the United Nations. This lack of achieving the stated aim could be attributed to countries’ different institutional backgrounds, the awareness and approaches to education for international understanding, implementation purposes, and counties’ interest needs. For example, in the UK the international education is used to generate significant income for the universities. The UK government’s estimated that the education exports are around £35 billion per year (GOV.UK, 2021).
Although, the Education for International Understanding has a utopian vision, it has a certain impact on the relevant education policies and practices in the world. Nevertheless, more than 40 years later, the world has not become peaceful, and international conflicts and contradictions have not changed, and they seem to be more dangerous, more intense and complex. The international understanding education advocated by the International Education Bureau (referece) with the goal of promoting world peace and the original intention and suggestion of incorporating this concept into all educational fields have more positive and practical significance at present, and are still issues worth further consideration in the field of education.
Based on the above brief review and the unique educational significance of Design in the field of Humanities education, this paper suggests that the concept of international understanding education should be incorporated into the field of Design Education. I would argue that incorporation of the international understanding education might facilitate development of theoretical research and designers with international understanding literacy to foster cooperation. For the design field, it is an important literacy and ability requirement for future practical work. For other fields, through some methods and interesting expressions of design, mutual understanding, respect and communication can be more colorful, and then cross-field work can be successfully completed. I would propose that in context of the “Belt and Road” initiative, which is enabling China and countries along the route to promote more open economic, trade and cultural cooperation, the Design programmes should make the international understanding education to become a core competence in order to train the future design professional to who are able to work in complex cross-cultural working environments. At the same time, the spirit of “openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and peaceful cooperation” of the ancient ‘Silk Road’ has provided profound and valuable historical experience in promoting multi-flow exchanges and cooperation for today’s world to learn from. The Design Education has a cultural foundation and therefore it has obligation to actively integrate international design literacy into its practices to promote cross-cultural understanding and cooperation.
Taken together, the design literacy initiative based on concepts related to international understanding of education will involve the following recommendations:
- Integrate the basic idea of international understanding education and its related content into the undergraduate curriculum education of designs, and cultivate basic understanding literacy.
- To cultivate the international understanding literacy of design practice teaching teachers.
- Integrate international understanding and design literacy courses into middle school humanistic literacy education, and take incentives to cultivate international understanding and design literacy teacher training.
- Integrate international understanding and design literacy into the basic literacy education system of universities, cultivate the spirit of equality, mutual learning and international cooperation, And expand to adult and social education, further enrich and expand the concept and connotation of international understanding education.
References
GOV.UK (2021, 6 February). Policy paper: International Education Strategy: 2021 update. Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/international-education-strategy-2021-update [accessed on 23 October 2022)
Zheng Caihua.(2013).UNESCO and the development of education for international understanding (02) .Foreign Primary and Secondary Education.
Jiang Yingmin.(2018).Comparative Research on Educational Policies for International Understanding from the Perspective of Globalization(1thed.). Shanxi Education Press.
Zhao Zhongjian.(2005) .The Historical Track f Global Educational Development: A Collection of Proposals for the UNESCO International Conference on Education (2thed. ) .Education Science Press.
UNESCO.(2015) . Education 2030 Action Framework. Adopted and released at the 38th General Conference.
The Ministry of Education of China.(2016) . Promoting the Educational Action of the Belt and Road Initiative. Issued on July 13.
Xiaoyu Li is a Doctor of Art and Design. The main research fields are the cultural exchange between the East and the West in arts and crafts, and the regional research of design art. The author has published more than ten papers in academic journals in the domestic design field. Participated in the completion of the research work on four projects of “Shandong Volume” textile, embroidery, printing and dyeing, and clothing of the series of “Chinese Folk Craft Collection” project specially commissioned by the National Social Science Fund, Presided over the completion of the key project of Shandong Province Art Science “Silk Road Civilization and the decorative aesthetic changes of arts and crafts research, The academic papers “The influence of Uyghur ancestors on the use of gold in silk in the Central Plains during the Five Dynasties, Song, Jin and Yuan Dynasties” and “Golden Makeup in Tianshan Mountains: Origin of the Aesthetic Psychology of Decorative Art” reflect the research on different cultural exchanges. Recently, the author is participating in the national social science fund art major project “National Design Policy Research under the Background of the Belt and Road”, focusing on cultural understanding and the research on the value and significance of design.
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