Design is very much project-based anchored essentially on solving of problems mirrored on those found in the working world and thus many values of authentic PBL are deeply connected to the various design professions. Among them are outcomes such as problem-solving skills, teamwork, self-directed learning, a client-centered working style as well as creative concept-building and idea generation.

A study of TDS’ pedagogical framework reveals that:

A major portion of design learning takes place through ‘learning-by-doing’ and developing the ability for continued learning and problem solving throughout the professional’s career. Projects are the main vehicles. A project entails ‘problem-setting, ad-hoc theory building and on-the-spot experimenting in an integrated manner of working with what D. A. Schon (I) called “reflection-in-action” ’. Schon described design education as ‘studio-like in the sense that it would organise itself around projects to simulate practice and would ask students to plunge into these before they know what they need to be doing or learning’. He said that, ‘it begins with problematic situations, in which there are initially more variables than one can handle...’. It ‘is organised around manageable projects of design, individual or collective, which are more or less closely patterned on projects drawn from actual practice. The studio contains its own traditional events — master demonstrations, “design reviews”, “desk crits”, “juries” — all of which have grown up around the central theme of practice in designing’.

Schon (1985) sees the design studio pedagogy as the very model for education in all the professions, including medicine, law and even business. Peter Senge (2000) observed that the pedagogical process of design studios and their implications for other fields of study have been widely studied because of this seemingly inherently capability of design studios to facilitate reflection and action in learning as described by Schon. “Schools of education, business, and others in universities have begun to restructure their programs based on studio pedagogy’ and similar research on problem-based learning (PBL) in medical schools and educational administration programs have also been published”.

-Keith Tan (additional remarks in italics)

Thus we see the reason behind the sibling similarity between PBL and design studio pedagogy.