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Abstract
Sustainable development is now widely held as a transcendental ideal of town and country planning, yet the way in which it is taught in planning schools remains problematic. This arises from a range of factors, including the all‐persuasive nature of sustainability and the lack of solid examples of success through implementation. The issue of how best to promote learning for sustainable development in planning has arguably intensified in the last two years in the case of the Royal Town Planning Institute‐sponsored ‘fast track’ one‐year Masters, which has reduced the opportunities for students to engage in wider (and perhaps even deeper) concepts, including that of sustainable development. This paper explores this through discussion of a specific project developed at Queen's University Belfast, facilitated by a grant from the UK Higher Education Academy. Working with a local community, this entailed a group of students working on their Masters thesis collectively addressing issues of sustainable regeneration in a small Irish market town. The design of the project draws heavily on the concepts of enquiry based learning, experiential learning and action competence, which are seen as being central to improving education for sustainable development (ESD). The paper explores the benefits of such an approach and discusses the ways in which this experience can help enhance student's experience of ESD.
Acknowledgements
The project upon which this paper is based was made possible through funding under the Higher Education Academy small grant scheme for education in sustainable development and the authors would like to acknowledge this valuable support. The authors acted as tutors on this project and were responsible for its design, implementation and evaluation.
Notes
1. ‘Education for sustainable development is about the learning needed to maintain and improve our quality of life and the quality of life for generations to come. It is about equipping individuals, communities, groups, businesses and government to live and act sustainably; as well as giving them an understanding of the environmental, social and economic issues involved. It is about preparing for the world in which we will live in the next century, and making sure that we are not found wanting.’ (Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Sustainable Development Education Panel Citation1998, section 6).
2. Parkin et al. (Citation2004) define a sustainability literate person as being someone that would be expected to: (1) understand the need for change to a sustainable way of doing things, individually and collectively; (2) have sufficient knowledge and skills to decide and act in a way that favours sustainable development; and (3) be able to recognise and reward other people's decisions and actions that favour sustainable development. This has been further elaborated by the Higher Education Academy (Citation2006, 6).
3. This is the traditional term for this professional activity, which for the purposes of this paper is indistinguishable from land use‐, environmental‐, urban‐ and spatial‐planning.
4. There are full‐time, part‐time and distance learning routes and courses are available at Masters and undergraduate (4‐year) levels, see www.rtpi.org.uk.
5. In the case of our institution, Queen's University, Belfast, this has included a reduction in ‘specialist’ elements of the course such as urban design and transport, while some ‘core’ topics, like sustainable development, are now embedded within different parts of the programme rather then having a dedicated module. For a comparison of the two courses at this institution, see Appendix 1.
9. Quotes are provided from students in the text – those involved in the project are identified as being a ‘participating student’, those that took their thesis by the conventional route are noted as being a ‘non‐participating student’.
10. Sir John Egan was asked by the UK Government to review the skills capacity and training needs of professionals and other stakeholders involved in development of the built environment, as a way of identifying potential obstacles to its programme of delivering sustainable communities. This agenda is now being carried on to implementation by the Academy of Sustainable Communities (see www.ascskills.org.uk)
