Public Design Education: Plural Practices and Situated Teaching and Learning

This editorial introduces Track 8.1, Public Design Education: Plural Practices and Situated Teaching and Learning, and reflects on the submissions, review process, and accepted contributions as a way of exploring how public design is currently being interpreted, taught, and learned. We position public design as a transdisciplinary mode of practice enacted within and alongside public administration and other public-sector subjects, where institutional ways of working, governance conditions, and commitments to public value shape the design process itself. Drawing on contributions to the track, we examine the diverse interpretations surrounding the term, the competencies and capabilities associated with becoming a public designer, and the pedagogical orientations that emerge across diverse learning settings. The editorial argues that public design education is best understood as a plural, situated, and evolving field, one that extends beyond formal education and is defined through a range of practices, contexts, and epistemologies. In doing so, it outlines key convergences, divergences, and gaps that can support further inquiry into how public design is theorized, practiced, and taught.