Intergenerational Co-Creation in Rural Design Education

In contemporary design education, fostering social responsibility and empathy remains a pedagogical challenge, as technically oriented training often distances design students from real-world learning contexts. This study investigates how intergenerational co-creation functions as a pedagogical strategy to transform student agency in rural settings. Utilizing a qualitative multiple-case study approach and a multi-cohort design, the research examines an eighteen-month capstone design course in Taiwan. The research focuses on two paradigmatic student teams (n = 11) from consecutive academic years who co-created social innovation artifacts with rural elementary school children. Data sources included longitudinal reflective journals, field observations, and design artifacts, which were triangulated to track shifts in students’ professional identity and learning outcomes. The findings reveal a three-phase learning trajectory: (1) sensory surrender, where students unlearn professional biases by adopting children’s sensory perspectives; (2) educational nostalgia, an affective mechanism that redirects motivation from grade-seeking to intrinsic social commitment; and (3) agency construction, where students learn to negotiate between external assessment pressures and local authenticity. The study proposes an intergenerational agency co-creation model, demonstrating that when educators prioritize meaning-making over immediate technical perfection, students evolve from service providers into socially engaged “local guardians.” This research contributes an empirically grounded framework for integrating community-engaged learning into design curricula, offering a pathway to cultivate the existential empathy required for sustainable social innovation in design education.