Özet:

The primary and middle school curriculum in Turkey, structured in a manner to raise standard individuals, force students to focus on university exams rather than guiding them toward their interests. The students that focus on the entrance exams generally decide on a profession based on random choices made among the branches in which they can enroll with the scores they achieve in these exams. Despite the fact occupational education for many professions, due to its nature, is usually built on the knowledge the students acquire in primary and middle education, and uses learning methods that the students are familiar with to equip them with new knowledge and skills, there are fields that are excluded from such generalization. For instance, design education typically aims at shifting to a mentality that attempts to understand the layers of the existing, and explores social life, physical environment and interpersonal relationships instead of a one-dimensional mindset. Most of the institutions that provide design education offer a range of basic art and design classes in the first year to endow the new high school graduates with the fundamentals and such multidimensional thinking and learning skills. Even if they have never been subjected to this approach, some of the students can easily adapt to such ways of multidimensional thinking and learning. But others may have difficulty moving beyond the learning method in which they are successful, find it challenging to adapt to design education; and at times they may even feel forced to transfer to other fields and quit. This is where study and career counseling and publicity departments of high schools and universities should play an important role. In promoting their school, they would help the students to become more acquainted with a profession and give them a perspective they would need throughout their education, offer a chance to experience beforehand different approaches they could adopt for problem solving, to make more informed decisions for their university choices, and better prepare for the process. Therefore the quality of the activities to promote a school becomes critical in encouraging students to choose design education. Including different types of learning in the publicity efforts would ensure that the students experience different approaches they would need throughout their education in a holistic way. Within the scope of this essay, various activities in and out of the university targeting students who are aiming for Design Faculties have been analyzed by the Kadir Has University, and these activities have been assessed in line with the Experiential Learning Theory in terms of the different cognitive stages that students with varying qualifications go through.

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