LEGITIMIZATION OF SUBJECT MATTERIN AN UNDERGRADUATE ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN PROGRAM:A CULTURAL AND SYSTEMS THEORY ANALYSIS
Open Access
- Author:
- Cox, Charles David
- Graduate Program:
- Instructional Systems
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 04, 2009
- Committee Members:
- Christopher M. Hoadley, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Simon Richard Hooper, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Fred Michael Schied, Committee Member
Daniel E Willis, Committee Member - Keywords:
- culture
learning objectives
instructional systems
architecture
systems - Abstract:
- This study is a descriptive investigation of the cultural and systemic processes of legitimizing subject matter being introduced into the curriculum of an undergraduate architecture program. The culture being observed and interviewed during their day-to-day encounters with curriculum and its modification is one university’s department of architecture. Legitimization is used here to mean the progress that innovative subject matter makes from being initially ill defined and informally included with instruction, to being well defined by cultural agreement and systemic records, and finally considered an integral part of the curriculum with recognized status as a title in the university’s course catalog. Employing ethnomethodological strategies, the investigator maintains prolonged contact with the members of this culture, taking advantage of the opportunities to watch and interrogate legitimization and curriculum modification taking place in the domain of sustainable architecture. Much of this happens in the face of disturbances to these processes and the culture’s reactions to those disturbances. These disturbances and reactions make the underlying processes observable and explicit to an extent not revealed under ordinary circumstances. There are three main audiences for this study: instructional designers, architectural design educators, and those interested in sustainability and its status in a design curriculum. While sustainability for its own sake was not the primary focus here, how sustainability is emerging in this culture’s instruction and curriculum should be of interest to the latter group. Where this study is intended to provide a fundamental contribution is at the intersection of instructional design and design instruction. To date, little in the instructional systems literature discusses the architecture studio and its crucial role in architecture degree programs. When it comes to how learning objectives should or should not be applied to studio courses and curricula, the literature of architectural design education has not dealt comprehensively with systemic institutional pressures for assessment. Again, this is a descriptive study of a single department, and a glimpse into the ways that culture deals with these issues.