Apprenticeship-Type Learning in the Local: Insights from a Cooperative Weaving Practice for Design Education

Abstract

A growing area in design research concerns learning from local practices and diversifying design’s knowledge space. By understanding and documenting how women in a village in Turkey learn the craft of weaving, this paper reformulates the relationship between the design field and the local context as learning from the local and aims to contributes to the design education field. During the summers of 2017, 2018, and 2019, fieldwork using the participant observation method was conducted in the village. The detailed account of the learning process in this local weaving practice allows us to define this learning as “apprenticeship type learning in the local.” The practice consists of a process in which the forms of learning and teaching are inseparably interwoven with socio-spatial elements. It draws together flexible learning processes where the teaching moments blur and students learn in action in a dialogical exchange through observing and making. During these interactions, the importance of considering the cooperative and social aspects of the learning arises: not only technical knowledge, but also social values and beliefs are transferred in an interdependent process. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.