Abstract
The growing awareness of the importance of involving communities in the development of more sustainable futures (e.g., social design, co-design, design for social innovation) has made it essential to train designers capable of considering the real needs and capacities of communities and of co-designing from these premises. This requires new pedagogical approaches able to engage non-academic actors in the educational process. Through the experience of the “Change Agents” project, an Erasmus+ initiative aimed at facilitating collaboration between universities and NGOs in the field of Social Design education, this paper explores the interaction between research and teaching within design academies as an opportunity for the critical development of these approaches. Specifically, it focuses on the case study of the Master in Eco-Social Design at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano and the analysis of the course Project 1, one of the two pilots carried out within the research project. Adopting a methodological approach based on participant observation, narrative interviews, and participatory workshops, Change Agents enabled the assessment of participatory and situated design approaches within the Master’s pedagogical framework. The paper discusses the results of applying an action-research oriented model that, through a live-feedback mechanism among researchers, students, lecturers, and other actors involved, strengthened participation, self-reflection, and continuous learning improvement, helping to structure more inclusive, collaborative, and power-aware educational pathways in co-design processes.