This image was constructed very quickly to illustrate a point I made over at the Cranbrook forum.
When I get a minute I'll tart it up and explain exactly what it means, but to put it briefly:
There is a theory of knowledge that suggests we move through four distinct phases, from unconscious ignorance (I didn't know I didn't know something - like this theory, for example!), to conscious ignorance (now I know I don't know about this theory but I'm gonna learn more), then conscious knowledge (ah, now I know about it!) and finally unconscious knowledge (I apply it all the time but I don't think about it when I do).
For a teacher it is important because if you attempt to, for example, teach design theory through practice (as many of us do) there is a danger that we may think that students have "got it" when in fact they haven't because they haven't even started on that little journey. So in critiquing a double page spread we art direct a student towards a solution that "works" but unless we teach them why it works there is no guarantee they will do so again without our supervision. And by focussing on the product, rather than the process, we keep students in the first two quadrants of the square when in fact we want them at least in quadrant three.
Not a very good explanation, sorry - I'll try and do better when I get a minute or three!
Visual Communication: From Theory to Practice
(Winner of 'Best Higher Education Title' at the British Book Awards 2006)
by Jonathan Baldwin and Lucienne Roberts
More Than A Name: An introduction to branding
by Melissa Davis and Jonathan Baldwin
2 comments:
A small note regarding your visualization of the Theoy of Knowledge. Would it not be more fitting for the last arrow to (step 4) to point back towards the beginning, a new level of 'unconscious ignorance' and then proceed again, a cycle.
I debated that, and I think the new version gets halfway to what I wanted, but I think this theory is distinct from the idea of Kolb's Experiential Learning, for example, which shows learning as a continuous thing. This theory is about knowledge of something, a distinct fact or skill. Something new starts once unconscious mastery is attained, so it's not the same process.
Ooh - very difficult to describe!
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