Abstract

With some exceptions, learning and teaching theory is grounded in pedagogy based upon studies in behavioral and cognitive psychology that used captive subjects as their experimental basis. “Crisis drift” is a theory-in-practice that replaces this authoritarian pedagogy with nothing, free tagging, disruption, flow, where the learning community wants to go, or might have to go. “Meta-gogy” dissolves control, not compelled to finish but to connect. Whether it is a network crashing or a mob determining new priorities, learning does not stop. Learning may actually flourish but has definitely changed, and for the duration of any crisis is set adrift. “Is this drift useful, providing a new way of teaching and learning design?” Radical contingencies lead design learners and teachers to new solutions with or without permission. The learning and teaching of design is bound in corporate institutional systems of ownership, transactions and gateways. Yet hacking systems and receiving cracked software is the ground many design learners learned on. Crisis drift attempts to mobilize the contingent subject’s design objective.