UCL's 6th biennial Teaching & Learning Conference
15-16 April 2008
Teaching social sciences to spatial planners
and future built environment professionals.
Educating for social responsibility?
Claire Colomb
The Bartlett School of Planning
c.colomb@ucl.ac.uk
Introduction & outline of the presentation
1. The changing context for the education of built
environment professionals
2. Teaching urban sociology to planners: course design and
curriculum development
3. Innovation in teaching delivery: generating curiosity and
critical thinking
4. Educating for 'global citizenship' and social responsibility?
Encouraging ‘critical practitioners’
5. Evidence of positive reception of teaching & further
development
1. The changing context for the education of
built environment professionals
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Global
National
Planning discipline and profession
UCL
Department
Global context
• The urban challenge
• Climate change and sustainability: the key role of
cities
• International migrations: impact on European
cities
National context
• Spatial planning and urban regeneration now key
issues on the policy agenda of New Labour.
• A high demand for professionals in this field.
• government has pressed for the promotion of new
‘skills’ (Egan Review of the Office of the Deputy
Prime Minister, 2004)
Planning discipline and profession
• The RTPI defines ‘planning’ as the ‘making of place and
mediation of space’, and the objective of planning
education as encouraging 'critical thinking about space
and place as the basis for action or intervention' (RTPI,
2003).
• The professional accrediting body for planners, the Royal
Town Planning Institute (RTPI), has triggered a major
reform in planning education in the early 2000s which had
an impact on all planning schools in the UK.
• Recent reforms of planning education: ambiguous impacts!
UCL
• Global citizenship and internationalization agenda
• New transdisciplinary initiatives to tackle global
challenges (global health, environment, cities)
Department
• The specific nature of planning education:
challenges for teaching
• Increasing student numbers and poor facilities:
maintaining teaching quality
• Undergraduate programme: wide diversity of
student body (70% BME in BSc programme)
• Students: keen interest in cities and in ‘changing
places’… but not necessarily in ‘sociology’!
The challenge
• To enhance the analytical skills and sense of
social responsibility/global citizenship of future
planners and built environment professionals
educated at UCL.
2. Teaching urban sociology to planners:
course design and curriculum development
• In 2002 I took over the teaching of Urban Sociology in the
School of Planning and redesigned the course to
encourage students to:
– critically analyse the social and political construction of ‘urban
problems’ and understand the rationale of urban (public) policies
and other interventions on urban space [of which they will be a part
in their future professional practice].
– become ‘socially-minded’ professionals who take into account the
socio-economic, cultural, ethnic, and spatial divisions which
characterise our societies and try to address them rather than
ignore them.
• Future planners and urban designers have to
understand the social, economic and political
dynamics of contemporary cities before they can
strategically think about planning and designing
improvements to ‘space’ and ‘place’.
• Fostering students’ understanding of the social
dynamics of cities, exploring the interrelationships
between society and urban space, between social
change and spatial processes.
• Redesigned the curriculum of the course to
address the contemporary challenges facing
future planners in UK and European cities
• Integrate current social and policy issues of key
significance
• Emphasise the effects of economic and social
restructuring on urban change and social
inequalities in cities, as well as the policies which
have been designed to address the urban issues
that arise.
Themes covered:
Urbanisation patterns in the UK - the
impact of economic restructuring
and socio-demographic change on
British cities
Inequalities and urban space:
processes of spatial polarisation,
segregation and exclusion
From urban poverty to social exclusion:
conceptualisation of urban deprivation
Urban policies and the political
construction of urban problems:
Using social sciences for a critical
analysis of urban policy
Ethnic minorities and
the city: integration,
exclusion and urban
policy
Cultures in the city…
… & culture for the city
Social disorder, insecurity and the
“fortress city”
• Over the past 5 years, new themes were
introduced to respond to issues of increasing
national and global significance:
– After the July 2005 London bombings, a new session
on ethnic minorities, integration and multiculturalism in
UK cities was introduced.
– A discussion of New Labour’s agenda on crime and
anti-social behaviour was also recently included in the
course.
3. Innovation in teaching delivery: generating
curiosity and critical thinking
• Mix of lectures and interactive seminars
• Aim: make students critically discuss the
implications of the social trends and tensions
shaping contemporary cities for their future
professional practice as planners.
• Various teaching methods used to trigger students’
interest, to generate debates and discussions +
enhance the students’ learning experience
• Each seminar uses a different method:
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film/documentary screening
Debates (in various forms)
web-based research+creation of a database on Moodle
critical analysis of media materials (construction of
social problems)
• Seminar activities guided by a short brief (key
questions).
• Examples:
– Can planning and urban policy get people back into
‘compact’ cities?
– Can planners “design out crime”?
– Can good urban design restore civility and sustainable
communities in contemporary cities?
– Can British inner cities undergo ‘urban regeneration’
without ‘gentrification’?
• Students have to ‘construct’ their own knowledge
by discussion.
• Most of the materials students need are ‘on their
doorstep’:
• London is used as a rich case-study to illustrate
and discuss issues of global significance for
contemporary cities - social exclusion, diversity,
ethnicity, segregation, insecurity and anti-social
behaviour, and the influence that planning can
have on those issues.
• Personal experiences are encouraged as valid
source of knowledge.
4. Educating for 'global citizenship' and
social responsibility? Encouraging ‘critical
practitioners’
• The key objective is to raise students’ awareness of their
social responsibility as future professionals in the field of
planning, urban design and urban regeneration.
• UCL’s strategic commitment to educate students for 'global
citizenship' and social and environmental responsibility (as
expressed in the Institutional Learning and Teaching
Strategy 2005-2010).
How to achieve that?
– encourage students to critically analyse the social and political
construction of ‘urban problems’;
– understand the rationale for public and private interventions over
urban space (justifications, policy narrative)
– make their future practice informed by a sound understanding of
the social impacts of their activities.
• In particular encourage them to ‘deconstruct’ negative
media and social stereotypes, perceptions and
discriminatory attitudes to certain problems, places or
groups of people.
• A form of ‘conceptual change learning’ defined by Bowden
(1990).
Integrating ‘diversity’
• By its very nature, the course integrates issues of
diversity, ethnicity and equal opportunity in the
city.
• Students bring some of their personal experience
in the seminar discussions and ‘subjectivity’ is
used as an asset, as long as students can be
reflexive about the impact of their cultural and
social ‘baggage’ on their way of ‘seeing the world’.
Challenges for the teacher
• How to deal with the subjectivity of each person’s
views on society and social problems? With one’s
own normative values (which inevitably transpire
into teaching?)
• The presence of implicit political opinions in
teaching and in assessment?
• Moderating discussions on ‘difficult topics’: religion
and multiculturalism.
5. Evidence of positive reception / further
development
• Student and peers’ feedback over the past years
• Provost’s Teaching Award 2006-2007
Future development of the activities
• Change the assessment method: a term-long London
based project?
• Dissemination of the teaching materials developed
• Collaborative work with colleagues in other departments or
disciplines (UCL Urban Lab / new MSc Urban Studies)
• Further educational research on the role of social sciences
in planning education
References
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Bowden, J. A. (1990) Curriculum development for conceptual change learning: a
phenomenographic pedagogy (Occasional Paper No. 90.3), Melbourne: ERADU - RMIT.
Goodstadt, V. (2005) Rebuilding the Planning Community: Questioning the Orthodox
and Speaking the Truth, Planning Theory & Practice, 6 (2), pp. 247-249.
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (2004) The Egan Review. Skills for Sustainable
Communities,
London: ODPM, available online at
http://renew.co.uk/FileUploads/Skills_for_Sustainable_Communities.pdf [last visited on
7/06/07].
Peel, D. (2006) Planning Educational Research and the UK Research Assessment
Exercise, Journal for Education in the Built Environment, 1 (1), pp. 30-50.
Royal Town Planning Institute (2003) Policy Statement on Initial Planning Education,
London: RTPI.
Rowland, S. (2006) The enquiring University. Compliance and contestation in higher
education, Maidenhead: Open University Press.
University College London (2005), Institutional Learning and Teaching Strategy 20052010, London: UCL, available online at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/teachinglearning/Staff_pages/policy_context.htm [last visited on 7/06/07].
Thank you for your attention.
Questions?