Collaborative experiences: Co-design, social cohesion, and critically and expanded world-views in fashion design education

Fashion education remains unpinned in twentieth-century models. Yet, collaboration, inclusivity and communication are fundamental twenty-first-century skills, hence, fashion education should transform through co-design pedagogy. However, limited scholarship exists around co-design pedagogy in fashion education. Hence, the research questions: (1) how can co-design pedagogy be applied in South African fashion design education and (2) how do students experience collaboration? The aim contextualizes a co-design pedagogy with first-year fashion design students and draws on empirical research to explore students’ collaborative experiences. Qualitative, data entailed artefacts comprising of first-year students’ written narratives and analysed via content analysis. The findings reveal that past school-based experience with collaboration appeared unfavourable. After co-design, the consensus was one of positive experiences with collaborative learning experiences and social cohesion emerging. However, for few students’ the hero-designer world-views emerged. This article adds to the discourse on the scholarship of teaching and learning in fashion design education and co-design pedagogy.