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A closer look into pedagogical roles of supporting staff in design studio courses: the case of research assistants in Turkey

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Abstract

Supporting staff, as research and teaching assistants, in higher education carries significant pedagogical responsibility, especially in practice-based domains. In this respect, understanding the pedagogical roles of these participants of design studio courses is particularly critical. This study aims to investigate the research assistants’ pedagogical roles within design studio courses in Turkey through an exploratory sequential mixed method. Adopting a phenomenographic approach, the exploratory study, relying on semi-structured and in-depth interviews, was conducted with the voluntary participation of twenty-six research assistants from industrial design departments. Sequentially, a survey study was conducted to support the exploratory study. The findings show that there appear fifteen roles of research assistants, both pedagogical and non-pedagogical, active and passive teaching approaches, in-studio and out-of-studio contexts. The pedagogical roles were also discussed and mapped to compare with each other.

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  1. The quotations were translated by the authors. Italics for emphasis.

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Acknowledgements

This study (Project ID: MGA-2020-42555) was supported by Scientific Research Projects Department of Istanbul Technical University.We would like to thank the research assistants who participated in our study voluntarily. We would like to extend our gratitude to Tuğçe Ecem Tüfek Şerifoğlu, Enver Tatlısu and Onur Yılmaz for their valuable contributions.

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  1. Department of Industrial Design, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Pelin Efilti & Koray Gelmez

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  1. Pelin Efilti
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Correspondence to Pelin Efilti.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 2, 3, 4

Table 2 The numbers of universities
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Table 3 Interview questions
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Table 4 Survey questions
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Efilti, P., Gelmez, K. A closer look into pedagogical roles of supporting staff in design studio courses: the case of research assistants in Turkey. Int J Technol Des Educ 33, 1143–1172 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10798-022-09760-3

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