Don Norman and Scott Klemmer’s commentary State of Design: How Design Education Must Change challenges the design field to embrace theory and integrative educational approaches. It compliments the Carnegie Foundation’s recent report on the future of business education, which calls on business schools to integrate elements of liberal education into undergraduate business curricula.
These thinkers challenge their fields and disciplines to escape disciplinary tunnel vision and embrace marginalized or new practices.
If integrative learning is the future of adult and higher education, not only must fields change, but also institutions, and higher education systems.
My hunch is that we need to find ways to move beyond binary thinking. Theory—Practice, Quantitative—Qualitative, Skills—Knowledge, Art—Science — Such spectra limit our ability to progress. So do linear metaphors like tunnels.