Keynote Presentation Friday
Tracks
Track 1
Track 2
Track 3
Track 4
Track 5
Track 6
| Friday, June 19, 2026 |
| 9:15 AM - 10:15 AM |
| Kittyhawk Room |
|
Sponsored By:
Queensland Teachers' Union
|
Overview
Teaching the verb, not the noun (practical strategies for Interdisciplinary Design Learning)
Speaker
Dr Genevieve Mosely
Research Fellow
The University of Queensland
Teaching the Verb, Not the Noun: Practical Strategies for Interdisciplinary Design Learning
Presentation description
As design and technologies education increasingly intersects with other subject areas, teachers face a key challenge: how to support students to work across disciplines while still developing strong design capabilities. This session introduces a practical pedagogical framework for interdisciplinary design education, grounded in arts and design teaching traditions and informed by international research with over 40 educators and practitioners. The framework shifts emphasis from teaching design as an outcome (the noun) to teaching design as an active process (the verb). It provides a set of adaptable teaching strategies organised across six signature pedagogies, alongside guidance for applying these at different levels of practice: individual classroom tasks (micro), unit and curriculum design (meso), and whole-school or program approaches (macro).
Participants will explore concrete ways of structuring open-ended design tasks, supporting collaborative learning, and helping students navigate the tension between creativity and assessment requirements. The framework supports students to develop reflective, adaptive and collaborative capabilities that are essential for contemporary design and technologies contexts. The session also introduces a practical model for understanding how design operates within interdisciplinary learning. Through four complementary orientations, teachers are supported to recognise when design is shaping, enabling, or emerging within cross-disciplinary tasks, providing a clearer basis for integrating design into STEM, project-based learning, and broader curriculum contexts.
Participants will work through examples and begin to adapt these strategies to their own classroom contexts. This includes examining how tasks can be reframed to emphasise designing, making and reflecting, rather than focusing on final artefacts alone.
Participants will explore concrete ways of structuring open-ended design tasks, supporting collaborative learning, and helping students navigate the tension between creativity and assessment requirements. The framework supports students to develop reflective, adaptive and collaborative capabilities that are essential for contemporary design and technologies contexts. The session also introduces a practical model for understanding how design operates within interdisciplinary learning. Through four complementary orientations, teachers are supported to recognise when design is shaping, enabling, or emerging within cross-disciplinary tasks, providing a clearer basis for integrating design into STEM, project-based learning, and broader curriculum contexts.
Participants will work through examples and begin to adapt these strategies to their own classroom contexts. This includes examining how tasks can be reframed to emphasise designing, making and reflecting, rather than focusing on final artefacts alone.
Biography
Dr Genevieve Mosely is a Research Fellow in Design at The University of Queensland. Her research focuses on design facilitation as an epistemic practice, examining how collaborative design is enacted across interdisciplinary contexts. She explores the capabilities, tools, and conditions that support collective sensemaking and knowledge development in design practice, with experience across healthcare, education, and industry collaboration. Her work draws on practice theory to understand how design expertise is performed in action, with particular interest in facilitation and knowledge integration. She also contributes to interdisciplinary design education, supporting approaches that emphasise collaboration and learning centred on designing, making and reflecting.
Cara Wrigley
Professor
The University of Queensland
Co-presenter
Biography
Professor Cara Wrigley is Professor of Design at The University of Queensland. Her research focuses on design-led innovation, design thinking, and the application of design methods in organisational and interdisciplinary contexts. She has worked extensively with industry and government to embed design capability and support innovation across sectors. Cara’s work explores how design can drive strategy, transformation, and value creation in complex environments. She leads collaborative research projects across industry, healthcare, and the public sector, and contributes to advancing design education, particularly in developing design capability across disciplines.
