Education Special Interest Group: Design for Values in Education at TU Delft

The Education SIG aims to bring together educators from across the TU Delft to strengthen the integration of values, such as sustainability, inclusion, and responsibility, into education. By working together and involving students, the SIG aims to deliver best-practices and form an outlook for integrating values in TU Delft education, contributing to a future-oriented education that prepares engineers to make responsible choices for society and the planet.

Vision

The SIG understands Design for Values (DfV) as a design approach aimed at integrating values like justice, sustainability, integrity, and inclusion in all stages of the design process. It foregrounds sensitivity to values rather than treating them as a mere constraint at the end of a design process and educational journey. This perspective recognizes that values fundamentally guide decision-making about teaching approaches and learning experiences, in addition to the engineering and design approaches being taught.

Given the plurality of value systems across individuals, societies, industries, and institutions, tensions between personal values and stakeholder values are inevitable. DfV in education thus requires critically examining and justifying value priorities in context. This SIG therefore seeks to move beyond typical technical education where values often remain implicit, and instead foster transparent, value-aware practices.

Aims and Activities

The SIG facilitates the explicit integration of value-thinking into TU Delft education by creating a TUD-community of value-thinking educators and allies, fomenting awareness and cultural change about values in TUD education, and creating a strategy for integrating values in TU Delft education.

Current activities include an overview of teaching experiences, initiatives, resources and experienced colleagues; teaching practice guidelines around value-thinking through reflective sessions with the education community; and communication with TUD education decision-makers to integrate values into education training, teaching support, and curricula.

Funding and partners

Activities are funded from September 2025 to December 2027 by the Delft Design for Values Institute. The SIG works closely with the TU Delft Teaching Academy and seeks collaboration with related initiatives including TU Delft IDEE and the Inclusive Education Community.

Get involved

Interested in joining this edSIG community and participating in some of our activities and events? Write to edSIG-ddfv@tudelft.nl. If you are interested in having a proactive role in organizing these activities and the overall decision making within the SIG, write it down in your email with a clear indication of how you could contribute.