Mimetic Teaching Strategy in Design Education: Relationship Between Students' Learning Style and Creativity

Abstract

This research focuses on the relationship between students' learning style change and the components of creativity in a design studio environment where mimetic teaching strategy is adopted. It is assumed in the study that the change in learning style is associated with the level of creativity in the design process and product. The theoretical framework of this study, which focuses on the learning strategy of a total of 13 students taking the second-year architectural design project course in the architecture department throughout the semester, is formed by Rhodes' 4Ps (Person, Press, Process, and Product). According to this, the skill of reasoning (person) by Sloman and Pahl & Beitz (associative-variant / hybrid-adaptable / metaphorical-original); resource utilization in the design process (press) by Casakin, Akalın, and Özkan & Akalın (within domains –hybrid- between domains); design process (process) by Rittel (linear / non-linear) and the created product (product) by Gentner & Markman and Welling (application-analogy-combination-abstraction) were analyzed based on the theoretical framework. Analysis findings showed that students who experienced different learning styles at the beginning and end of the semester were in a constant search by adopting a non-linear design process, and these students reached the original design by using metaphorical reasoning. Students using associative reasoning with a linear process struggled to abstractly analyze ill defined design problems, which led them to generate variants of solved design problems. One way to break this situation is to guide learners to find examples that will lead them to metaphorical reasoning, activate their relationship with place context, and lead them to metaphorical reasoning. Since creativity is closely related to the ability to restructure and reinterpret, the metaphorical reasoning strategy in developing solutions with mimetic approaches should be encouraged as a tool that shows students different thinking alternatives, and original or adaptable designs should be encouraged.