Are you an interior designer thinking about teaching your craft? Australian Design Review (ADR) finds the answers to all your burning questions.

It’s February, which hopefully means many interior designers have taken their first steps into the new year with some semblance of a break behind them and, with that, space to recalibrate their goals and values. Returning to your routine, visiting showrooms and speaking to clients can be invigorating with fresh eyes.

If that last sentence doesn’t resonate, perhaps this same set of circumstances has had the opposite effect on you. You might be feeling like you’ve reached a stale point in your career. You’re at your desk daydreaming of new horizons and wondering if your skills might set you up well for an entirely new occupation. If you’ve clicked on this article, chances are you think teaching could be just that occupation. 

Pondering a career pivot can feel like wading into the unknown. For the more cautious of us, it raises several questions, such as: Do I need to go back to study? Are there many jobs out there? What’s the pay like? And the work-life balance? Will teaching provide me with the same creative fulfilment that design does? 

To find some answers, ADR spoke with experienced university tutors and professors. With years of teaching and decades of designing under their belts, they were once in your position and are perfectly placed to paint an honest picture of teaching interior design.

Becoming a teacher

For Angela Costa, a tutor of interior design at Melbourne’s RMIT University and director of Est Design, becoming a tutor in her late thirties happened “organically”. 

Back then, she was running her interior design business part time while raising her two-year-old daughter. She began to long for an alternate design outlet and to share the industry knowledge and experiences she’d accumulated.

“The interior design industry is in an interesting bubble and it has been for quite a while, and I feel the role and relevance of interior designers are diminishing thanks to influences like The Block,” she says.

Nevertheless, Costa still wanted to work and do something “for herself” while parenting. With a few nudges from her partner, who taught pottery and recognised Costa’s great teaching potential, she enrolled in a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment. 

In Australia, tertiary study falls into two categories: higher education and vocational education and training (VET). Often referred to as ‘the TAE’, the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment allows its graduates to deliver training and assessment in the VET sector. It provides the skills needed to teach, covering units like facilitating classes online or supporting students with disability. 

Costa’s course involved one week of in-person learning, which some institutions offer remotely. During this week, she listened to a lecturer talk “non-stop” through the set text, followed by group work with fellow students from different sectors. 

“None of us knew what we were doing. We’d never done anything like it,” she recalls.

The hard work didn’t end there. Over the next six months, Costa also completed several assignments.

“It really was quite stressful,” she says, “and anyone who does the TAE just cringes every time they hear about it. But a TAE is an essential pathway to teaching in and having an understanding of the vocational education system, conducting assessments and meeting the requirements of students.”

Despite the hard slog, Costa “really enjoyed” her course in the end. Soon enough, she was putting her daughter to bed at night and jumping online to teach at Mercer School of Interior Design. She simultaneously taught the basics of interior design to hobbyists in a non-accredited course at the Centre for Adult Education, all the while keeping up a few Est Design jobs on the side. 

“I always said I wanted to have my fingers in a lot of different pies, but in the same industry,” she says. “All of a sudden I just found myself there. I was in a really good place.”

Do I need to study the TAE?

As in many professions, Costa learned most of her skills on the job, which begs the question: do you even need to complete the TAE? Is there a way to avoid the course that makes its alumni cringe?

According to a spokesperson for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, to teach interior design at a registered training organisation in Australia, you must hold a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment or other specified credentials. You must also have relevant vocational competencies, current industry skills, and current knowledge and skills in vocational teaching and learning.

Meanwhile, in the higher education system, tutors aren’t required to have a teaching qualification, says Jenni Woods, program leader of interior design at Collarts in Melbourne.

“However, I will say it is highly desirable that anyone teaching in higher ed completes some form of teacher training,” she tells ADR.

She recommends Collarts’ Graduate Certificate in Higher Education (Creative Arts). Other similar courses include the Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching at Swinburne University of Technology. 

“I would preference teachers who are either completing that sort of course or who are open and keen to do that sort of study,” she says.

Typically, you won’t be able to teach at a higher education level without having at least one qualification in a relevant discipline above the course you’re going to teach.

“If you want to teach at bachelor’s level, you will need to have a master’s or a graduate diploma or graduate certificate,” Woods says. If you aspire to be a lecturer, you usually need a PhD or equivalent.

Collarts intentionally employs casual teachers who remain active in their professions, whether that’s interior design, architecture, game design or something else. While Costa and Wright say interior designers should teach interior design courses, Woods is of the view that it comes down to individual subject specialties.

“A fine artist can teach the drawing, but an interior designer can also teach drawing units if it’s a strong part of their current practice,” she says.

You can do, but can you teach?

So, you’ve done your time as a designer and you’re willing to undertake teacher training. But does that mean that you should become a teacher?

The saying goes that ‘those who can’t do, teach’. Practising designers have already proven that they can indeed ‘do’, therefore the real question here is: can those who do, teach? For Dr Natalie Wright, a Brisbane-based interior design educator since 1993, the answer is: not necessarily.

“Good teaching is not delivering content from a textbook – you need to tell the stories, analogies and use some unconventional methods to convey the important messages and incite agency and engagement,” she says. “In my opinion, you need experience designing in the industry to enable you to tell these authentic stories.”

Wright also believes teachers need to be able to integrate into their teaching the development of ‘soft skills’ like teamwork, collaboration, empathy, negotiation, critical thinking, problem solving, public speaking, professional writing, digital literacy, leadership, professional attitude, work ethic, career management and intercultural fluency, as these are the skills most valued by employers.

Woods says teachers must also possess quite a few of these skills themselves.

“Not everybody is able to teach, it really does take a special skill set,” she says. “You need a lot of empathy. You need to be very patient. You need to be motivational and able to inspire, but also be able to support people with a wide range of learning styles and needs.” 

Woods has observed a “huge increase” in learning challenges over the course of her career and acknowledges growing awareness around neurodiversity in all areas of life. In her opinion, it takes a “certain kind of person” to manage a broad range of abilities in the classroom.

“You need to have a high level of respect for diversity in the teaching space,” she says. “That is really important, and to just check your levels of judgment because you’re going to meet the widest range of people you’ve ever met in your life in a classroom.”

Another key skill is knowing how to deliver supportive and constructive feedback “without bringing people down”.

“I think you have to be hyper-aware of your communication style and you need to have a high level of emotional intelligence,” she says.

While Woods believes empathy, kindness, creativity and the ability to foster connections are “deep-seated” values, the good news is that there are some non-design talents you can attain. Public speaking is one (often-daunting) inevitability of teaching and is a skill that could be improved by a short course. As is academic writing and software proficiency.

Time and money

Maybe you’re starting to tick all the right boxes needed to become a teacher – now to check if teaching ticks your boxes. First things first: how much are you likely to be paid to teach interior design at a tertiary level?

In Costa’s experience, the rate varies greatly depending on the course and academic level. She is paid on an hourly basis and has received anything from $60 to $120 per hour.

Collarts pays its casual academic teachers according to the Educational Services (Post-Secondary Education) Award 2020, says Woods. This includes gross remuneration of $162.62 per hour for a lecture, $126.16 for a repeat lecture, $127.84 for a tutorial and $84.26 for a repeat tutorial.

Meanwhile, Wright says the hourly wages of sessional staff at Queensland University of Technology start around the mid $40s to mid $50s, depending on industry experience and education level, with higher rates paid to those with a PhD or equivalent.

The demand and the demands

Another important consideration is whether interior design tutors are currently in demand. Speaking anecdotally, Woods says there is a constant cycle of jobs available and recommends enquiring with the institution at which you studied. 

“When you’re employing casual teachers, there’s always the chance that their life situation changes, their work situation changes, and they either want to reduce the amount of teaching they’re doing or stop teaching altogether,” she says. 

Casual staff at Collarts can pick and choose how many units they take on each trimester, with flexibility to take holidays and breaks. As a sessional teacher at RMIT, Costa currently commits to around 15 hours a week, with additional paid hours spent marking when required. 

“The work-life balance has been really good because, within the hours that I’m working, I’m able to still do life and comfortably look after my daughter and look after myself,” she says.

The trials of teaching

Teaching’s woes are well documented, from disengaged students and difficult personalities to dated and inflexible course curricula, the exhausting and repetitive nature of marking, seas of silent black screens in online classes, and universities that are slow to develop plagiarism guidelines around the use of AI.

Adding to this, interior design education might be on the precipice of change. Wright and Woods are involved with the Design Institute of Australia’s ongoing efforts to have interior design recognised as an accredited profession on a similar level to architecture. This will have flow on effects for education, standardising and repackaging courses to include units that underpin registration of interior designers in state regulatory building regimes.

What keeps teachers going

Despite the challenges, Wright, Woods and Costa have been teaching for a collective 56 years. They share common reasons for persevering in the profession.

“I found that, while teaching, I was continually inspired by students and forced to learn more myself, which made me question my own practice and made me a better designer,” Wright says. “Without a doubt, teaching design is a whole other skill set and really forces you to understand your own process in order to be able to impart this skill to others.”

For Costa, a surprisingly positive part of teaching has been handling all the messy things that come with being human.

“I really love it and I really didn’t anticipate just how intricate it was going to be in dealing with people’s different abilities, emotions and personalities – it’s incredible,” she says.

“I’ve had students in the past who have actually brought me to tears because of their personal situations or even their abilities and what they bring to class.”

All three educators say that seeing students blossom and thrive, particularly against the odds, gives them a rewarding sense of their own impact.

“Some of my proudest moments are calling out students’ names at graduation ceremonies and seeing them afterwards with their family and friends so excited and proud of their achievements, because it’s a hard course to complete,” Woods says.

Last words of wisdom

For interior designers thinking about taking the leap into teaching, our experts have some final pieces of advice.

“There are so many schools out there that I think need knowledge. They need interior design knowledge, not just knowledge,” Costa says.

“In my opinion, only interior designers can tell interior design students what interior design is like. Whether you’ve worked in it for two years, whether you’ve worked in it for 40 years, everyone’s got something to say. Sharing the knowledge is the best thing that you can do for the students. Just be honest.”

Woods corroborates the importance of honesty and authenticity in education – you don’t need to be ‘the sage on the stage’ to be a teacher.

“One of the best things you can say to students when they ask a question is: ‘I don’t know, that’s a really great question. Let’s learn it together,’” she says. 

“…You really need to be able to put your ego away, and students just love the fact that they can introduce something to a conversation that you don’t know.”

She recommends newcomers ease into teaching with just one subject to build their confidence.

“Every time you learn a new subject, you are learning it all over again,” she warns. 

If you’re thinking about an academic career in a university be “prepared for long hours and giving your time freely”, says Wright. You’ll also need to leave your ego at the door and think about a research field that will sustain you for the long term. 

“It is a fulfilling career in which you are always learning, given opportunities to work with diverse clients and stakeholders, and gain reward from seeing your students succeed,” she says.

“…Unfortunately the holidays are not the same as school teachers!”

Photography supplied.