TERRAZA SUPERIOR Unidad Patrimonial 50m2

PART FOUR.

4.1 : THE FIELD STUDY

4.1.1 : THE THESIS AND RESEARCH PROBLEMS.

At this point it is relevant to restate the thesis and its research problems The thesis is that schools of building design in the United Kingdom are not producing designers of sufficient creative ability, capable of designing buildings of aesthetic worth because they are not searching for gifted students or for students with ’creative’ ability. To support the thesis the following five research problems were developed.

1. Tutors who select students for design courses are not necessarily selecting for design ability but rather for students who have the ability to complete the course.

2. Due to im precise selection procedures tutors become victim s of th eir own stereotypical views on what makes a successful designer and make subjective selections based on their own belief systems

3 . Schools of building design accept students’ often with reference to the students’ ability to be able to comply with the schools own academic agenda (i.e. perhaps arts or science biased) rather than the candidates on ability to design.

4. There are many creativity tests which might be of value in selecting s tu d e n ts fo r design courses,are staff aware of them and why do none appear to be used.

5. Design may be a form of giftedness that some individuals have and others do not. Do selection tutors recognize this or what views do they hold? Do they have any objective or subjective criteria for assessing it ? Should schools be doing more to define this ability and searching for it ?

The first problem identified in the research was that; depending on the nature of the design course the agenda of the individual schools (whether disclosed or undisclosed) are such that specific biases are knowingly or unknowingly sought in candidates applying to the school. For example it could be in structural or environmental engineering, sociology, planning or interior design, thus, selectivity for creative or innovative design ability or competence may be of secondary importance to the school, though for candidates seeking a

career in design that could well prove frustrating and latterly lead to poor design whatever this may be.

The second question raised was that tutors engaged in the selection of candidates for design courses were not only selecting in regard to the resources and disposition of the school but also selecting candidates, using their own personal criteria that had no regard to objectively accessing, (used in the context of scaling or quantifying) the creative aptitudes of aspirants to their courses. Thus the exploration of this hypothesis required the investigation of the personal canons doctrines and postulates of the individual staff members during the selection process. The process itself needed to be regarded in its practice, i.e. how may interviewers were involved, where is it done etc.

The third concern regarded the quality of the designers that many design establishments produce. It also concerned the unusually large 'drop out' rates from design courses; in comparison to the is it that many candidates were selected for reasons of school survival (ie without sufficient students the school could be closed or their budgets severely cut )rather than design performance? Therefore the interviewers responses during the selection sessions required examination in the areas of social interrelations, personal bias and identifying the interviewers responses to, and expectation of the candidates "types" (i.e. what Herriot refers to as interviewer/candidate stereotyping).

The fourth hypothesis is initially straight forward, do design institutions use creativity tests (as discussed earlier) as an element of their selection processes, yes or no? If yes, which ones, and what benefit have the tests provided and what long/medium term value are they? It then may become less straight forward; If they do not use creativity tests, why not, and what reasons are there for not doing so?

The fifth problem area is based on the concept of natural eurhythmy and having the eye. Is design talent a form of ‘giftedness” which some individuals have,do staff agree or disagree. How do they recognize it and should it be sought in applicants to architectural courses when possible,or can anybody be taught to be creative?.

It is important to establish to whom the research is referring in the text. The interviewer, respondent or interviewee all denote a member of staff, e.g. admissions tutors, heads of school and so on, while the term candidate, applicant or student all refer to those individuals applying for places on design courses.

4.1.2: METHOD

The field study was primarily designed to discover the previous research problems which it was believed would not only support the thesis,by providing meaningful data for the research but also to perhaps suggest useful stratagems to improve the student selection process in the academic design school.

In discussion with tutors it was determined that the instrument needed to be broad ranging in its approach and that because of the very nature of the process under study the offering of 'closed type questions' w ould not produce useful inform ation for this research. Keeping an open answer format and using a 'prompt list' aid instrument, appeared to be the most appropriate (see appendix A l for questionnaire). Because of this nature of the data being collected the instrument was designed as both a 'free response' and 'precoded' document. The 'field coded' sections were at the beginning of the instrument and were more related to gathering statistics and general information about the architecture school. The latter parts were more open ended and 'precoded' in nature. The respondent was given a copy o f the document and was offered alternative points and asked to provide his or her preference rankings of choices or attitudes. The interviewer, while administering the questionnaire was at the same time discussing, probing and supporting the respondent in the process. The nature and running order of the response categories were the result primarily of the writers work and teaching experience, aided by some work done by the Royal Institute of British Architects Statistics branch in student involvement priorities (1987) and the American Institute of Architects survey of student subject preferences (1982); both of which produced lists of subjects and interest areas.

The questionnaire was set out into five main sections broadly following the five main problem areas, with up to seven subsets in each. The wide ranging nature of the research areas and subsets required that at each stage of the writing up of the results,each subset be treated in a complete form. That is, rather than providing all the questions in one section, and all the results in another, questions and results are provided consecutively with then a final analysis section which overviews the whole and develops the thesis.

4.1.3 : TH E RESEARCH

The initial research planned to use the developing instrument initially at two centres, thought it inevitably ended up being more due to the complexities involved before committing the author to a final questionnaire. It was always envisaged that the methodology involved in obtaining the data would be through a structured instrument, gathering through ranking, specific attitudes and opinions. The majority of information gathered would be in the

(belief) category with strong normative com ponents, in particular relating to design "quality". This may establish if there was response bias in relation to the attitudes of academic staff to student candidates and then the students later performance? Possibly this student performance could be identified by the high student dropout and failure rates discussed earlier in the research? This was the instrum ents’ brief, to identify such discrepancies. As stated earlier many of the questions by necessity, needed to be open ended. The questionnaires were never to be self-administered. In every case the researcher was present. The respondent was given a copy of the questionnaire to follow, as it was read out, the researcher would then, in note form document the respondents answer.

4.1.3.1 : PROCEDURES - SAMPLING

A pilot study was initially organised. H ow ever the questionnaire was in continual development throughout this pilot stage. This reflects the complexity of the problem. The pilot study also generated several peripheral issues which needed to be identified, if only to secure them in a periphrastic position.

It seemed to be the case that during the process of gathering data for the research it was discouraging to identify that at many of the institutions visited in the UK there were two 'views' available.Firstly the public view and then the private personal view .Often this may have been due to (at that time) pressure from the Department of Education and Science, from the Royal Institute of British Architects (which although split on the matter appeared to be in favour on the DES initiatives) from the European Committee on rationalising architectural education in Europe (1986) and from the professional press, to cut the thirty six schools of architecture in the United Kingdom to a num ber (Building Design, 16 August 1986) nearer 28. This would resulted in a loss of eight (8) schools and within the remaining reduced number, it was intimated that many of the surviving schools could lose their post-graduate courses. With this sort of background problem - which, (1995) is still on the agenda, even though in 1992 the majority of schools expanded their student cohorts. All the institutions visited were not keen on disclosing any information into the public realm which could be detected by any of the aforementioned agencies and possibly be used as a lever in any government instituted closures scheme.

Therefore most of the responses to the questionnaires which were concerned with what the schools believed were confidential or sensitive in nature were often 'off the record'. The author frequently felt that because of the nature of the research, being in the architectural school with a questionnaire was seen as a threatening act.