The programme for which I teach is the Associate Degree Arts & Crafts, a level of higher design education that can be achieved within two years. The incoming students are graduates of a broad range of creative secondary vocational education programmes; they have been provided with basic (e.g. reproductive) professional qualifications in job categories related to trade, craft, or technique and have gone through a solid training oriented to practice and skills. The implication is that this type of student somehow lacks the ability to (re)act, to criticize and to resolve autonomously. Moving these students forward in their autonomous artistic and knowledge development is the main challenge which Associate Degree educators must face.

Another problem that I encounter when evaluating the competencies of incoming students is the economic orientation of their prior training. The secondary vocational education curriculum focuses primarily on employability and market-oriented training for becoming a designer. This predominantly economic approach does not thoroughly contribute to the students’ ability to act relevantly and to respond to current urgent issues, such as the environmental crisis.

Therefore, this research project particularly aims to contribute to a genuinely sustainable approach to education in the field of design. This approach promotes motives and objectives that previously have been ignored in the pursuit of economic applicability. Encouraging the adoption of non-economic positions will contribute to rebalancing the interests of other, highly underexposed dimensions besides economics. It is of great importance to pursue sustainability in the fundamental sense, in which there is an equilibrium between the three pillars of sustainability – the economic, the social, and the environmental – in order to prevent further degradation of human society and the natural environment. As a matter of fact, sustainability is not a license to continue ‘doing business as usual’, but entails a total transformation of human behaviour and ideology.