Speaker
Description
What do students need to know and be able to do to work effectively in the unfolding world of climate breakdown, and polarized challenges to governance? In our recent curriculum transformation, this question has been at the heart of our work in the School of Planning and Sustainability at the University of Northern British Columbia. In this paper, we present the theories that guide the work, the learning and curriculum contexts, and our reinvented planning studio curriculum. We also show some initial student learning results.
Our first curricular principle is that the future is not like the past. Climate breakdown is accelerating and affecting communities worldwide, in a litany of fires, floods and droughts. We are also dealing with increasingly intense socio-cultural divisions. Fueled by profitability – the information industry accumulates through fear, hatred and distrust. Students will need to be equipped to develop new approaches to work ethically and effectively in a new future.
Our second curricular principle is that knowledges of the past are vital. The identity of the profession, while contested, also roots us in a set of practices and knowledges that equip us to engage the future. Pursuing effective climate action is a grand challenge, and also a renewed opportunity to heal and avoid reproducing the wrongs of colonialization, scientism and dehumanization.
We introduce this future/past contrast to highlight the tension between the predictable and programmatic ‘here is what to do’ elements of planning knowledge – from the capacity to encounter and tackle the unpredicted. from the unpredictable and developmental. In this contrast, ‘the past’ is roughly defined as the topics laid out in standards. In planning education in Canada, the accrediting body reviews curricula for a set of conventional ‘competencies’ across subject areas. Matters of intergenerational equity mean our program is also responsible to emerging methods that grapple with foresight, futurity, uncertainty, and transformation. As we engage with diverse knowledge systems in our curriculum, we have found it useful to balance the ‘programmatic’ with the opportunity for students to learn in ways we did not predict.
In the studio progression along with course work, we have attempted to ‘program’ such that students learn and are mentored in the planning knowledges ‘of the past,’ while co-creating the abilities that we expect will allow them to thrive in an uncertain future. We are guided by pedagogical theories that speak to both these cases. For those competencies that are rooted in known practices, we have tried to make better use of ‘student learning outcomes’ theory. We can articulate these skills, set standards, and attend to student work to measure learning. As we are certain that our students will need to have the capacity to critically and resourcefully develop new practices, we are guided by the theories that emphasize ‘development capacity’ – transformative learning, and experiential learning.
As we report our experience with an ongoing process of curriculum change, we will also present our context, including our opportunities and challenges. The realities of our northern region and our ongoing effort to manage an institutional change process in a theory-relevant way is a story worth telling.
We have implemented a core progression of studio courses, emphasizing experiential and community engaged learning. Our studios have responsibility for ‘accreditation competencies,’ but it is also important that these studios feature the elements of uncertainty, mentorship, and ‘learning-to-learn’ that are key to students’ development as future professionals. Finally, we will offer some examples of student work as examples of both competency-based learning, as well as student capacity development in uncertainty.
| Keywords | studio pedagogy; planning curriculum; climate education |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
