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Tully, Robert; O'Connor, Ina

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This paper critically examines identity construction in design education through the Professional Practice module on the BSc Product Design at TUDublin, while situating it within contemporary debates on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The module focuses on transformative and reflective practice facilitated by a trans-disciplinary discourse. It positions professional identity as a fluid attribute, negotiated within contextually relevant practice, informed by socialisation, ethical reflection and world views. From this perspective, the formation of professional identity reveals how dominant disciplinary narratives can exclude alternative epistemologies and experiences. By emphasising reflective and student-centred pedagogies, the module cultivates reflexivity as a critical element of professional development, enabling practitioners to question the nature of diverse values, voices, and needs which inform design practice. The emphasis on critical dialogue enables conventional hierarchies to be challenged, advancing a pluralistic model of design professionalism that embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion as integral to creative and ethical design practice. This Professional Practice module provides a framework for interrogating, synthesising and reimagining professional identity as an inclusive, dynamic, and ethically grounded process. It reconceives design education to not only accommodated but embed diversity, equity, and inclusion within the epistemological and moral fabric of our students’ future selves, enabling them to become more open minded questioning citizens as well as professional designers.

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