Linking daylighting practice and education: a focus group-based study on motivations driving practitioners

This article describes practitioners’ motivations to work with daylighting and their educational needs, explored through the Goal Framing Theory (GFT) lens. The study is based on the results of 14 focus groups with 64 daylight experts from Denmark, Italy, Poland, and Sweden. The results, analysed through the GFT, revealed that experts’ motivations were driven by normative, hedonic, and gain goals to a different extent (with prevalence of normative, followed by hedonic and then gain goals), with diverse professional needs influenced by cultural factors. The results suggest that better building regulations is key for better daylit buildings, but it should be supported by broader daylighting education. Insights from these focus groups were used to inform the structure and content of the European daylighting curriculum developed within the New Level of Integrated Daylight Techniques (NLITED) project, which includes an e-learning platform and a series of summer schools active since 2021.