Designing capacity: broadening and deepening design capacity through design education

In this paper we canvass a shift in professional practice for teachers and teaching and learning as it focuses on Design Education. We acknowledge that changes in formal educational settings result from the scope and rapidity of changes in emerging technologies and understandings of pedagogical influences on teaching and learning. In canvassing the changes, in this paper we identify issues that emerge in relation a number of proposed solutions in dealing with gaps in teacher education in the field of Design Education. We suggest that these same solutions draw on traditional disciplines which ignore the possibilities of Design to engage 21st Century problems in teaching and learning. We draw attention to a neglect in current teacher education programs in relation to teachers of design and what this may imply for classrooms, teachers, and their work.