Understanding design education with a bibliometric approach: a story of 50 years

Abstract

Different disciplines continue to place more and more importance on design. This growth results in a variety of terminology relating to design being used in different studies. This study aims to reveal the current state of design education in two phases: (1) a bibliometric analysis to show the patterns in design education studies published in the Web of Science database, (2) a content analysis to examine how the design education studies use design related terminology. In the bibliometric analysis five themes emerged: science, engineering, technology, literacy and design-based research. The largest theme in our analysis is engineering. Science and technology also became prominent themes in addition to engineering's predominance. Technology and engineering journals served as the main publishing platform for design research, with the qualitative approach and theoretical studies in design education coming in second and third, respectively, in terms of frequency of use. 192 design-related keywords were found in the content analysis of 2062 abstracts, and they were divided into four groups in the design glossary: 8 keywords for design framework, 47 keywords for design types, 29 keywords for teaching design, and 108 keywords for design concepts. The variety of keywords connected to design illustrates the depth of the expanding interest in design education.