Learning to See Historically: Visual Comparison as Cultural Mediation in Taiwanese Vocational Design Education / Aprender a mirar a través de la historia: la comparación visual como mediación cultural en la enseñanza profesional de diseño en Taiwán

Design history is a culturally organised way of seeing, yet school materials often reduce it to names, dates, and isolated styles. This post-test-only study compared two existing vocational classes taught through different instructional arrangements. One class received a 100-min bundled lesson combining redesigned visual representations, explicit comparison dimensions, cross-period cases, a team quiz, and collaborative judgement; the other received established textbook-supported instruction. Valid samples were 28/29 participants for a selected-response Renaissance knowledge test and 27/28 for adapted questionnaires. The bundled-lesson class had higher post-test factual and conceptual knowledge (Hedges’ g = .91, 95% CI [.36, 1.46]) and exploratory self-reports of core competencies and situational interest, but not self-efficacy or social participation. Experimental-class open responses associated joint visual attention, comparison, peer correction, and reason-giving with their experience, while negative and blank cases showed uneven participation. These perceptions offer provisional clues, not direct measures of visual reasoning. With no pretest, random assignment, fidelity record, or direct reasoning task, the findings describe class differences and motivate stronger tests rather than establish intervention effects.