The Spiral of Knowledge Development: Professional Knowledge Development in Planning

Abstract

This paper explores knowledge development in professional planners in England, in both the public and private sectors. Through an exploration of how they engage and interact with a rapidly expanding knowledge base, the paper identifies how knowledge and expertise are developed that thereby inform their professional practice. It identifies the role, position in the career and level of expertise of the planner as influential to the drivers for knowledge development and the tools and techniques employed. It proposes that the level of expertise in professional planners should be seen as a spiral rather than a linear transition, and that the planning professional will move in and out of this spiral during their career in response to the changing demands of their professional practice. This paper adds to the body of academic work on the subject of practical knowledge development in planners, which is so far limited in the peer-reviewed literature.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Professor Paul Blackmore, Director of King's Learning Institute, Kings College London, for his advice and input to the original research. They acknowledge the permission of the Royal Town Planning Institute to use material from an unpublished report written by the authors as the basis for the paper.