Becoming reflective practitioners through community based planning projects

Inspired by the influential ‘reflective practitioner’ ideas of Donald Schön (1983), there is an established pedagogical tradition in the University College Cork, Centre for Planning Education & Research, in active learning, and using real projects with real clients as a teaching methodology. In semester two 2019, the first year Masters in Planning students engaged with the Glounthaune community to identify the community’s values and aspirations. Concurrently, the second year students prepared a masterplan for a new town centre, drawing on field work, research and findings from the aforementioned community engagement process. Personal reflection was formally embedded in both processes: students considered their professional and personal skills including working together, dealing with communities; active listening and thinking creatively. These reflections deepened the students’ learning through revisiting the experiences guided by a framework of prompted questions. In her discussion of the challenges in developing excellence in planners, Reeves (2009) insists that ‘Planners need to demonstrate their ability to transform understanding into practical and achievable outcomes… Employers want to see more than credentials; they want to see people demonstrating competence. One’s ability to do a job depends on knowledge, skills and qualities.’ Working on real projects with local communities while using reflection-on-action (Schön, 1983) to revisit the experience further develops their competencies.