Filling the gaps: shaping lighting. Education for the future

Abstract

Training and knowledge of lighting is an increasingly sought-after professional quality in Denmark and Sweden. However, technological development in the lighting field has been in recent years extremely rapid, not least in Scandinavia. This has led to a situation, where users, designers, specifiers, buyers and installers are often neither in possession, nor have access to, the knowledge about lighting that they need. The aim of the study is to map and analyze the existing offer and demand for competencies within lighting related fields. That is to say, the study has looked at the existing educational programs within a broad field of lighting and compared this ‘supply’ to the current ‘demand’ by local employers. The paper presents the results from a statistical analysis of data collected from a series of surveys, expert interviews and focus groups, involving more than 250 participants in Sweden and Denmark. Based on the findings, the paper presents recommendations for the design of educational curricula.