Article:

Knowledge of Design History contributes to the development of critical-reflective thinking, which is essential not only for design practice, but also for the construction of a social identity for professionals. Despite this importance, what can be seen from the National Student Performance Exam (Enade) is a low level of engagement on the part of students on Higher Technology Courses in Graphic Design (CSTDG) in relation to the historical knowledge of their professional field. Therefore, the central question of the research is: what content and didactic actions can improve student engagement in History of Design classes in CSTDG? And the general objective of the research is to identify what content and didactic actions can improve student engagement in History of Design classes in CSTDG. In order to meet the general objective, this research will be exploratory and qualitative in nature, with bibliographical and documentary research and a field study. For Deslauriers and Kérisit (2008, p. 131), the everyday life of the classroom is one of the "privileged objects of a qualitative approach". Following them, this research will involve: a) Bibliographic review: on Professional and Technological Education, didactics, curriculum theory, teaching Design History and the formation of the professional field of graphic design in Brazil; b) Sample: defined based on the 2020 Higher Education Census, we intend to use 50% of public institutions, i.e. 7, and double that for private ones, i.e. 14, adding up to 21 CSTDGs in total, based on the ranking of best performance in Enade; c) Data collection: the data will be collected through documentary research (Cellard, 2008), and through non-directed interviews (Poupart, 2008) and surveys (Richardson, 2012). The documents we will be working with will be the Course Pedagogical Plans (PPC), also known as Political-Pedagogical Projects (PPP), of the CSTDG, and the Discipline/Teaching Plans, with syllabuses, program contents and basic and complementary bibliographies. With the PPP/PPC, we intend to compare the profiles of the graduates to find out if there is a pattern between the skills and competences expected and to check if there is a common professional ethos. The non-directed interviews will be with teachers of the Design History subject from the 21 CSTDGs to find out what they teach, how they teach it and how they evaluate it, as well as their academic backgrounds and professional profiles to find out if these are variables that influence their teaching. The surveys will be applied to students, with 10 students per course in mind, totaling 210 individuals, to understand how they perceive the subject; d) Data analysis and interpretation: Content Analysis will be used, as presented by Gomes (2007), with a focus on thematic analysis. The stages for analysis are: breaking down the material into parts; categorizing the parts; describing the results of the categorization; making inferences from the results and interpreting the results based on the theoretical framework; e) Report: the writing of the thesis with the identification of actions and contents that could make up a set of suggestions/proposals for the teaching of Design History in the CSTDG.