Growing Future Planners

Abstract

The planning industry expects that tertiary planning education will prepare graduating planners with practical planning skills, applicable in an increasingly complex world. However, planning schools are not required to systematically include practice or experiential learning in curriculum. In this article, we explore the benefits of experiential learning, highlight gaps in application of the concept, and present a framework for integrating experiential learning in planning education at a tertiary level. The framework comprises core principles, applied to a range of experiential activities, scaffolded across an undergraduate planning program to provide increasing engagement in practice.

Conceptualising Co-creative Planning Pedagogies: The Community Knowledge Triangle

“…Real-world experiences are seen as offering situated learning, as advocated by Lave and Wenger (1990) in their promotion of authentic learning environments (vs. the classroom). Such real-world learning activities require students and academics to work collaboratively with planning practitioners and to experience planning in practice (Higgins, 2010;Baldwin & Rosier, 2017). By recognising the importance of these partnerships for planning education in this article, we identify three categories of learning communities: students, academics and practitioners.…”

“…As many scholars proved in earlier work, there is a tremendous interest in educational partnerships between students, academics and planning practitioners, in particular in the field of urban planning (e.g., Blair, 2015;Rosier et al, 2016;Baldwin & Rosier, 2017). One of the most well-known examples of such partnerships is the use of real-world experiences (Brundiers et al, 2010;Baldwin & Rosier, 2017) and the involvement of planning practitioners (such as governmental, business, non-governmental or civil society organisations) in educational settings (Higgins, 2010). Real-world experiences are seen as offering situated learning, as advocated by Lave and Wenger (1990) in their promotion of authentic learning environments (vs. the classroom).…”

“…Grounding student knowledge acquisition in relevant practical situations is seen as particularly valuable. Notably, learning by engaging practitioners and through hands-on experiences helps students to better grasp the real-world applications of their profession (Baldwin & Rosier, 2017), to learn more effectively through participation (Blair, 2015), and to better recall knowledge through active learning (Baldwin & Rosier, 2017). Scholars also recognise the importance of knowledge transfer from practitioners to academics, for example, to make research relevant for practice (Powell et al, 2018), to bridge the gap between education and practice, to share experiences, or to develop applied research proposals (Hoes et al, 2008;Penuel et al, 2015) whilst highlighting the challenges of knowledge transfer from practitioners to academics, such as different expectations, timetables and incentives (Rynes et al, 2001).…”

Embedding Sustainability in Interdisciplinary Pedagogy for Planning and Design Studios

“…Similarly, Baldwin and Rosier (2017) and Alizadeh, Tomerini, and Colbran (2017) conclude that planning programs will greatly benefit from embracing experiential learning by systematically incorporating activities such as studios in their curricula. Baldwin and Rosier (2017) suggest a practical framework for improving teaching and learning activities that support experiential learning in planning education. The framework emphasizes increasing student engagement in practice and progressive exposure of students to complexity of real-world situations.…”

Competing in the Planning Marketplace: An Analysis of Qualifications Demanded by Municipal Planning Recruiters

“…Planning practitioners are confronted with a range of different issues, including those that are complex, messy, and multi-faceted, which are commonly referred to as "wicked problems" (Balassiano 2011;Baldwin and Rosier 2016;Rittel and Webber 1973). In this context, planners need knowledge, a diverse set of skills, and the capacity to apply these resources to different contexts (Dawkins 2016;Greenlee, Edwards, and Anthony 2015).…”