"DISOBEDIENCE IN STYLE: AGENCY, TRUST AND JUDGEMENT IN MODERN PORTFOLIO EDUCATION" Authorship and Cover Design

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To examine how students learn to make, explain and defend design decisions while preparing work for assessment and admission. Drawing on research into private portfolio education in China, alongside A-level sketchbooks, studio teaching and experimental pedagogy, Researcher, Lemon Tang follows the everyday exchanges through which a project takes shape: a tutor’s correction, an example offered for guidance, a deadline, a request for approval.

These encounters can give students knowledge and confidence. They can also make it difficult to tell where helpful guidance ends, and another person’s judgement takes over. Rather than treating independence as something students must achieve alone, the book asks what kinds of support allow them to question advice, work through uncertainty and take responsibility for their choices.

Moving between research, teaching and personal reflection, Tang considers how portfolios turn learning into visible evidence, how trust shapes whose advice carries weight, and why the opportunity to experiment depends on time, resources and access. Disobedience in Style offers a hopeful account of design education in which students can listen closely, disagree thoughtfully and make work they have reason to call their own.