By exploring the role of student identities in shaping attitudes to learning, this study asks how design students draw on experience to work across theory and practice. It explores how a specific group of design undergraduate students in a UK university perform on two distinct learning experiences on their course: work placement and dissertation. In particular, it considers the context for learning: the value placed on practice and scholarship; the role of social identity; links between art and design education. Using (...) Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’ the discussion considers the role of experience and motivation in learning in design education, and questions how useful historical divisions drawn between theory and practice are to student learning in design education. By questioning the value of internal disciplinary conflicts to student learning, it asks how we distinguish between vital pedagogic processes and divisive practices in higher education. (shrink)