Students’ Public success and private breakdown?

Abstract

Design literacy becomes more essential to creating a collaborative and inclusive society. Nonetheless, students were more anxious and exhibited lower performance when design studio tutors employed the conventional master-apprentice pedagogy. The cross-pollinative team learning (CTL) design studio pedagogy was operationalised in a year-long randomised controlled trial with first-year Generation-Z beginning design students to resolve the limitations in the existing pedagogy. The CTL students were significantly less anxious compared to master-apprentice students at the year end, although the impact of both pedagogies on anxiety was relatively modest. The hidden CTL curriculum and social support were also demonstrated to enable CTL students to outperform one-on-one master-apprentice learners academically. This study suggested that the power structures of design studios should be recalibrated to acquire CTL advantages, thereby leading to more effective learning outcomes.