ABSTRACT
Learning through doing is an approach that sounds, perhaps, deceptively straightforward. It has a practical, commonsensical air about it. As learning through doing was being used to refer to a style characteristic of art and design education, this chapter explores that understanding it relied upon being part of a specific professional group and understanding their values and practices. The chapter shows how the learning through doing approach is referred to and understood in design education, drawing on the reports of the CETLD projects and the accounts of the researchers. The researcher described his desire to explore beyond the wide assumption that design students learned by doing. Learning by doing implies a coincidental, relatively haphazard connection between the learning and doing; the phrase learning through doing implies learning that is integrated with and inseparable from design itself. The learning through doing approach can also be related to practice-based students need to understand and absorb the role of making within the design process.
