Designing the discipline : the role of the curriculum in shaping students’ conceptions of graphic design

The graphic design curriculum in UK higher education is becoming an increasingly complex and contested space. Calls to reconsider the curriculum in response to a changing context for practice in the post-industrial age are occurring simultaneously with an increasing emphasis on academic education leading to work. This paper will examine how the recontextualisation of disciplinary knowledge practices in the curriculum is a place of contestation between academic and vocational dimensions. The implications of this contestation is considered in three ways. Firstly, as means to examine the role of graphic design in higher education, secondly, to consider the ways contestation is reproduced in students’ conceptions of the discipline and thirdly, to explore the role of the curriculum in shaping students’ conceptions. A phenomenographic analysis of interviews conducted with students revealed five qualitatively different conceptions of graphic design ranging from; the application of skills; to a means to create change. Limited conceptions of graphic design may reduce a student’s ability to access the full range of possibilities the curriculum offers and this is considered in relation to the notion of ‘powerful knowledge’. The paper suggests an explicit mapping of the contestation between academic and vocational dimensions is required.