Abstract

Reflective practice is a self-exploration approach that affords many potential benefits in creative design and education. While reflective practice is crucial in professional practice, craft design requires creative expression. Moreover, students must be guided to reflect on their artwork to encourage creative expression. This study aimed to explore the craft design students’ reflective practices in a cultural environment by using photographs and self-reports in fieldwork. Twenty students from an art college in China participated in the fieldwork. Their photographs and self-reports were collected as the study data. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyze two types of data, and the findings indicated that students actively developed new experiences across three themes: (1) material experience exploration, (2) knowledge extension, and (3) subjective perception-inspired critical reflection. The results suggest that self-report combined with visual data could promote students’ reflection as a form of active learning in a cultural environment. Moreover, reflective practice requires further attention as a means to provide new insight for craft and design practitioners in constructing critical thinking in a complicated social environment, thereby generating creative expressions.