The Independent Journal of Teaching and Learning Vol 2 2007

55 Communication theory often forms part of design courses, one of the essential attributes of designers is that they need also to be good communicators. Basic communication theory contends that effective communication takes place if you not only understand what you want to say and how you want to say it, but who you want to address. This takes us back to the who you want to address component as discussed earlier. Present theoretical input into our design courses seems to address the former two criteria, but little is being done to address the latter.

THE FORM OF CULTURAL EXPOSURE NEEDED As the intention of this paper is to point out the importance of cultural exposure, some discussion is necessary about the interpretation of the word culture . Often culture is addressed in course content where emphasis is placed on debates around cultural studies. Discussions typically centre on a modernist or post-modernist rejection, or embracing of, indigenous cultures, anthropology and social theory. Furthermore, culture is often discussed as a static entity, something attached to history. Alternatively it is seen as a representational veneer attached to communications, which is then criticized for being inappropriate and token. The multiculturalism that appears relevant for design educators to address is the everyday habits and practices of the many different peoples in South Africa. We need to address the diverse needs of the South African community many of whom live in a foreign or alien culture to each other. Due to the unhappy legacy of South Africa, the lack of exposure to different cultures during children s formative years has typically resulted in individuals being misinformed, distanced and often unintentionally intolerant of others whose upbringing and set of norms are different from their own.

WHERE THESE CONCLUSIONS COME FROM To test these views, questionnaires were sent out to twelve design educational institutions nationwide in May 2006. The institutions approached were a range of private and public tertiary design schools and universities that offer a choice of design courses across different disciplines. The intention of the questionnaires was to ascertain the existing race and ethnic profile of student bodies within the schools and to see whether this had changed markedly in the last years. Due to confidentiality issues at many of the schools, the response was poor. It consisted of six completed questionnaires. The answers provided showed there was a ratio of 83% white to 17% black within the student cohort. Or to put it another way, of 1487 students enrolled at the institutions that responded, 268 were either African, Asian or Coloured students.

Further research was subsequently conducted using a different methodology, semi-structured interviews conducted either by telephone or face-to-face sessions with senior lecturers in seven different design departments around the country. The interviewees were attached to Pretoria University, University of the North West, Durban Institute of Technology, Greenside Design Center, Vega Cape Town and Durban, University of Johannesburg, and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. The focus of the interviews leaned more towards the field of Graphic Design as opposed to the other design disciplines. These semistructured interviews proved more fruitful than the questionnaire model. Common threads emerged among design educators. These were as suspected: the difficulty of attracting and graduating black students; the lack of South African focus in course content and related to this, the lack of transformation within design curricula. To put it succinctly, the reality of the situation within our design education departments or institutions is that the student body is still predominantly white and that little focus is placed on multiculturalism within course content.

For years it has been recognized that we need to attract more students from our diverse cultures into the design professions. Most colleges have implemented concerted drives showing the importance of design as a career in an attempt to attract high calibre students into the field. Requests have come directly from industries whose need for black designers to fill Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) requirements are