Designerly well-being: implications for pedagogy that develops design capability

The concept of "designerly well-being" identifies the value for individuals and society of the development of design capability inherent in all humans. This concept builds on ideas more generally of capability, well-being and democratic design. The paper explores pedagogic issues, particularly in relation to the development of an individual's understanding of themselves as a designer, how they engage effectively in the processes of designing and how they develop the confidence and confidence to positively exploit their own designerly capability in their personal life, social and community life or professional life. Key to this is the stance of the educator on the processes of designing. The paper will present research that make the case for an iterative, dynamic view of process, responsive to the changing demands within any design or design related task. This research illustrates the importance of recognising the preferred approaches to design activity of individuals and the importance of supporting individual preferences whilst building new strengths to establish a repertoire of design methods, processes, knowledge and skills. Achieving designerly well-being across society is ambitious. In considering pedagogic approaches that could support this ambition and drawing on research findings from projects with primary and secondary aged learners (ages 5-18), the relationship between individual approaches to designing and the way design challenges are presented structured will be explored