Abstract
This critical analysis of studio courses in contemporary U.S.-based planning programs seeks to reinvigorate discussions about the potential of studio pedagogy in educating planners. I begin by reviewing the definitions, histories, and theories that inform our understanding of planning studios, mapping their evolution starting in 1909 and presenting a set of bookend data for 2009-2011. I then situate this analysis in contemporary education theory to argue that the boundaries of studio pedagogy can be expanded beyond teaching practice, and positioned as a space for new kinds of learning, new models of knowledge production, and new modes of practice.
Introduction
Among the now century-old traditions associated with educating professional planners in the United States, the role of studio pedagogy has fluctuated widely. Studio courses dominated the curriculum of our most venerable programs during the first half of the twentieth century, only to be eliminated from many programs during the 1960s and 1970s. Studios again found their way back into planning curricula during the 1980s and 1990s, though most often as single courses intended to serve as capstone experiences in the final semester.
These changing fortunes of studio courses are the result of many different factors, but their origin in design education, and relationship to the subject matter of design, has been key. Studio pedagogy was embraced when planning education was focused on physical outcomes, and then fell out of favor as the influence of the social sciences in planning ascended. A small but persuasive outcry to reinstate practice-based education emerged in the mid-1980s, resulting in a compromise of sorts: hybridized studio courses were introduced as a means to “teach practice” through the making of physical plans, while also introducing students to the values and norms of professional planning culture, and providing a space for intellectual “synthesis” of what was then largely social science–oriented coursework. Thirty years later, this compromise continues to characterize the role of the studio in contemporary planning curricula.
Is the current state of the studio—where studio courses play a comparatively small role in contemporary planning curricula—a good thing? Is a single capstone studio course the right amount of studio, too little, or too much? Meaningful answers to this “three bear” question should rely, ideally, on a solid and broadly shared knowledge of studio pedagogy, including its goals (e.g., professional socialization, learning by doing), its unique instructional characteristics (e.g., engaging experts, a highly iterative and intense work pattern), and how it compares to other course formats (e.g., versus lectures and seminars). We should have a sense of what subject matter is best taught in the studio setting (e.g., plan making as product and process). We should also understand the role of studio in the broader professional planning curriculum, including its weight in the curriculum (e.g., expressed as a percentage of total program hours) and its placement in the curricular time frame (e.g., core or capstone), as well as how to measure its particular educational outcomes (e.g., synthesis), among other issues.
Yet it is unlikely that our decisions about planning studios are made with this broad understanding of studio pedagogy at hand. While the existing literature on planning studios is relatively small, and thus conceivably suitable for quick mastery, it is also somewhat out of date having remained essentially dormant over a decade when many of the central concerns of planning have changed so dramatically. Moreover, the group that participates formally in this discourse is similarly small, and since pedagogy articles are not the best building blocks of tenure dossiers, few younger scholars are sustaining the conversation. There is also a sizeable knowledge gap between the practice and theory of studio instruction. For example, seasoned studio instructors, including myself—who are often trained in studio and/or have professional planning experience—can talk at length about what makes a good studio problem, a good client, or a good exercise, but may find it difficult to clearly articulate the educational theory that underlies studio-based learning without doing some extra homework. For the many faculty members who do not teach studio, but who nevertheless participate in curriculum planning decisions, there are no primers that summarize the value of studio pedagogy in planning education. Nor are there primers that prepare our students for what is often a brand new type of learning experience.
My critical analysis, in response, aims to revisit the definitions, histories, and theories that underlay the role of studio courses in educating planners. In so doing, I hope to inform decisions about the role of studio courses in planning curricula now and in the future. The questions guiding my inquiry are these: What is the unique value of studio pedagogy in educating planners? In other words, what do studios offer to instructors and students that other kinds of courses do not? If the history of studio pedagogy in U.S.-based planning programs is characterized by diverging opinions about its success as an approach to teaching, then what does this tell us about its potential and limitations? More broadly, what can education theory tell us about the role of studio pedagogy in higher education, and how might this inform our thinking about the potential of studio courses, now and in the future? What can we learn about the recent interest in pedagogies that borrow heavily from the tradition of studio courses—such as project- and practice-based learning—in engineering, medicine, and business?
To answer these questions, I review some key definitions, beginning with “studio” and “pedagogy.” I also enumerate the general characteristics of planning studio courses, and their curricular cousins, the “workshop” and the “practicum.” Next, I situate the intellectual tradition of studio pedagogy in the medieval guild system, tracing its emergence as the pedagogy of choice in nascent professional planning programs during the early twentieth century. I then turn to the history of studio courses in educating professional planners, starting with the first city planning course offered at Harvard in 1909, and providing a set of “bookend” data for programs operating in 2009, discussing key trends over the past century. I extrapolate from a set of influential writings on the role of studio pedagogy in planning (notably Adams 1954; Heumann and Wetmore 1988) to focus on ten of the oldest U.S.-based planning programs, charting the evolution in weight, timing, and objectives of their studio offerings from the 1950s through 2011. Finally, I present a brief overview of education theory to explain the unique attributes of studio pedagogy as revealed in this literature, highlighting the theories of situated learning and engaged learning.
Against this backdrop, I develop four arguments to serve as the basis for a reinvigorated dialogue about the role and influence of studio courses in educating planners. First, and least controversial, I reiterate the conventional wisdom that studio courses offer a space for teaching practice for which there is currently no pedagogical substitute. Second, I argue that studio courses can and should do more than teaching practice, by deliberately accommodating new kinds of learning: by purposefully debating the role of theory, ethics and values; by facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration; and by expressly teaching what it means to be a “creative” professional. Third, I argue that studio pedagogy can and should be tasked with the production of new kinds of knowledge, broadening expectations from plan making to include the testing of new theory, the production of new research, and assembly and distribution of new data. Fourth, I argue that studio pedagogy can and should be encouraged to investigate new modes of practice, with a focus on advocacy and community outreach, as well as meaningful collaboration among disciplines.
A word on what is not addressed in the body of this paper. As a critical exploration, I am primarily concerned with the why of studio pedagogy rather than the how of day-to-day studio course management. Important pragmatic concerns—including the nuts and bolts of training instructors, managing the client relationship, promoting a healthy studio culture, facilitating group work, the subjectivity of grading, finding suitable studio spaces, budgets, and other concerns—are not addressed here. Nor have I investigated the important role of technology—analytic, communicative, and/or representational—in studio courses. Certainly these issues affect course conception, delivery, and educational outcomes, but await more pragmatically oriented discussion. Here I would argue that it is important to revisit the theory first, since it is our understanding of studio pedagogy as an educational approach that ultimately shapes its delivery and, in turn, informs and guides these more pragmatic concerns.
Working Definitions: Studio, Pedagogy, and Planning Studio
Basic definitions are in order, and follow, for pedagogy, studio, design studio, planning studio, workshop and practicum. To begin, the word pedagogy is drawn from the ancient Greeks, specifically Plato and subsequently Aristotle, who were among the earliest educational philosophers. Plato and Aristotle felt that a just society relied on the education of its youth, and proposed a democratic system of student selection that involved the separation of children from their parents. Consequently, the term pedagogy is derived from the Greek words paidos, meaning “child,” and ago, meaning “lead,” and thus is translated as “leading the child.” In contemporary usage, the word pedagogy is more complex, covering “the art, science, and profession of teaching,” and simultaneously implying the strategy of instruction, the process of teaching, the style of instruction, and the study of being a teacher. In the context of “studio pedagogy,” and in this paper, many of these aspects come into play.
Turning next to studio, the word is Italian in origin, from the noun study, which is in turn derived from the Latin studium, in the form of a specific space or room. Common usage of the term today is more expansive, including a space to accommodate both the production and teaching of an art or craft, hence the “artist’s studio,” the “actor’s studio” and the like. Earlier usage emphasized the production of art, and it was the medieval guild system that first linked production to teaching through the apprenticeship system in a range of applied arts and crafts, from sculpture to ironwork. This guild or apprentice approach involved students learning under the direct tutelage of master practitioners, through example as much as through guidance, typically involving ongoing commitments of several years. The studio system eventually found more widespread legitimacy as an epistemology of practice in formal education circles through the professionalization of training architects. By the nineteenth century, the greatest architects in Europe were training disciples using the “studio” or “atelier” 1 system, led by the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, France (Chafee 1977).
The atelier/studio model born in the European architectural education system strongly influenced the organization of architecture schools in the United States, and subsequently the city planning and landscape architecture programs that began to sprout alongside these schools in the early twentieth century. For architects, studio courses were then and remain now the central pillar of the curriculum, a distinct setting for “acquiring the competence to perform,” managing the “indeterminate zones of practice which do not lend themselves to the theories and techniques of the normative professional curriculum,” engaging “the dilemmas of practice under conditions of uncertainty,” and acknowledging the shift from “problem-solving to problem-setting” (Schön 1985, 5). Importantly, architecture studios are seen by most architects—rightly or wrongly—as the only suitable place to teach “design” as a creative, artistic act (Salama and Wilkinson 2007). 2
Generally speaking, studio courses share a set of common characteristics, whether intended for the training of architects or planners. They begin with an open-ended problem, often taking account of current issues in the “real world” with “real clients” and giving students some choice in their direction within the scope of the problem. Then follow a series of structured conversations between the instructor(s), students, and often, a collection of outside experts with knowledge specific to the problem under examination. In architecture, these conversations have labels including the “desk crit,” and the “review” or “jury.” The desk crit (diminutive form of “criticism”) is an extended and loosely structured interaction between the student (or a group of students working collaboratively) and the instructor, where students are intended to internalize processes they can only do at first with the help of the instructor or other students. The review or jury is a formal presentation and discussion of student work, where the instructor mediates the interaction between students and outside experts. In planning studios, these labels may or may not be used, but the principle of a high degree of contact between the instructor and the student is relatively consistent, as is the notion of a final presentation of some sort to faculty and/or the client. Throughout a studio course, student work is usually characterized by a highly iterative and often intense working pattern, where problems are revisited repeatedly in a generative process. The course typically culminates in the production of an individual (meaning unique rather than necessarily the work of an individual student) and expressive response to the problem.
Beyond these common characteristics and activities, however, planning studios can be quite different from those delivered in our sister professional schools of architecture. As one would expect, they differ in subject matter along disciplinary lines: from the nature of the problem, the choice and nature of clients, the knowledge domains emphasized and the skills taught, onward to aspects of the site itself. In short, architecture studios teach architecture, and planning studios teach planning. For example, planning studios generally teach plan making, for varying functional concerns and at varying scales; thus, the deliverables (e.g., plans) and skills are developed specifically to produce those deliverables (e.g., writing, data analysis, production of graphics, oral presentations). Not all planning studios teach plan making. Some teach policy making and analysis, others teach the art and science of strategy; thus, the range of learning objectives and deliverables can vary widely. The role of the client tends to be far more broadly conceived in planning studios, introducing the complexities of agency and ethics in ways rarely explored in architecture studios. Other differences include the high degree of team assignments in planning studios, as well as attempts to work across disciplines, since collaboration both among planners and among other disciplines is a hallmark of planning practice.
A final important, if syntactical, distinction between architecture and planning studios involves the territories and meanings associated with the word design, and more specifically around the question of whether or not “planning studios” are, or can be, “design studios.” From the perspective of “designers” (read: architects), the terms architecture studio and design studio can be used interchangeably. Yet the same substitution of the word design studio to describe a “planning studio” has spurred skirmishes over the contested spaces and actions of “design,” although these dust-ups tend to be the variety of minor dramas only seen in academe. Planning studios that engage the morphologically oriented subject matter of “urban design” have an easier time co-opting the term design studio, but increasingly, as a glance through the employment classifieds will testify, the term urban design is reserved as the territory of “designers” rather than planners in the market for professional services.
For our part, planning educators also appear to reject the term design studios as a descriptor for studio courses taught in the planning setting. For some, the association of “design” with “planning” harkens back to the dark days of environmental determinism and the physical planning–oriented curricula of the 1960s. This rejection of “design” as a concern of planners occurred in step with the rejection of “studio” as a pedagogical approach when planning curricula evolved to embrace a social science orientation to respond to the urban issues and political activism of the late 1960s and early 1970s. As evidence, Wetmore and Heumann (1988, 143) report that among the twenty-eight new planning programs opened between 1965 and 1976, the scores of newly minted PhD faculty teaching in these programs were often more interested in the potential of their own disciplinary orientations to inform urban policy, and shaped their curricula accordingly. Baum (1997) characterized the outcome of this flood of social scientists into planning as a “hidden curriculum” that began to subvert practice-oriented instruction. An obvious argument here might be that, pedagogically speaking, we “threw the baby out with the bath water,” but it is probably fair to say that, at that time, there was reasonable consensus among planning academics that there was no value in studio pedagogy absent a physical planning agenda.
Yet it remains that planning students need to be taught about the plan-making process, and as a consequence of these tensions, many planning programs now teach plan making through hybridized courses that are not quite studios. In their labels, these courses avoid use of the word studio and its design or physical planning associations, but retain its problem-solving and practice orientation, combined with its interactive and iterative techniques. Thus, used interchangeably with studio—but not perfect synonyms—are variations such as the workshop and practicum. For example, a “workshop” may involve small groups working together to develop a set of skills or to discuss specialized topics, but may or may not involve creative problem solving, iterative expressions, or any of the common characteristics of a studio course. The effect, then, is a one-way transfer of knowledge, from instructor to student (or “pitcher to cup”) in a manner similar to but smaller than a lecture, and focused on delivery of an applied skill rather than domain knowledge. A “practicum” is by definition a work experience component that is often required as part of a program of study, with examples in the fields of medicine, psychology, and law. Practica differ from “internships” in the degree of control the host educational institution has over their content and delivery, although these lines are routinely blurred.
Histories of Studio Courses in U.S.-Based Planning Schools
Reports examining the role of studio courses in U.S.-based planning programs generally argue for three historical periods: (1) the domination of studio-based instruction from the 1900s to the 1950s, (2) the decline of studio as a result of the “quiet revolution” between the 1950s and the mid-1980s, and (3) a period of renewed, albeit comparatively modest, confidence in studio pedagogy emerging in the late 1980s/early 1990s, as a by-product of arguments in favor of returning to our professional roots in city design, as well as part of a call for more attention to teaching practice. Extrapolating from these writings, I present data for studio courses offered from 2009 to 2011, demonstrating that the third phase continues, with studio courses required by most programs but to a smaller degree compared to the early days of planning education.
Phase I: Studio Dominant, 1900s to 1950s
Studio pedagogy dominated the early days of U.S.-based planning education, starting as the vehicle for the first planning courses offered in the 1900s and continuing to account for 50 percent or more of total course hours in the nearly twenty planning programs housed in prestigious universities by the 1950s (Adams 1954). In these early programs, studio courses were seen as the locus of professional instruction, with traditional lecture courses serving as supplements, reflecting the educational culture and traditions of architecture as our parent discipline. (Landscape architecture evolved as a discipline roughly coincident with planning in the early 1910s. The first planning course taught at Harvard in 1909 was offered within the landscape architecture program.) These planning studios emerged, at least in part, as “architecture’s social conscience” (Kreditor 1990), and were taught by master “architect-planners” within design school settings. Thus, it is not surprising that the earliest models of planning education borrowed heavily from architecture, with studio as its dominant instructional approach.
As evidence of this period of studio domination, Adams (1954, as reported in Heumann and Wetmore 1984) provides what may be the first set of descriptive statistics on studio pedagogy in planning, based on his 1954 survey of all eighteen planning master’s degree programs in the United States (Table 1). Adams found that all graduate planning programs were offering a very similar student experience, centered on a sequence of three semester-long studio “workshop” courses that were required in the first three semesters of typically a four-semester program (although some were organized into six terms of varying duration). The subject matter of these workshop sequences was also similar across programs, encompassing higher degrees of complexity and larger scales as the student progressed through the program, beginning with site plans, then onward to district plans, and culminating with the comprehensive plan. These studio instructors were typically master practitioners, and were engaged in a style of instruction that was closely aligned with that seen in architecture schools. In fact, many of the instructors in these planning studios were trained in architecture, and as these same instructors also tended to be the leading practitioners of the day, modes of practice in architecture were mirrored in the practice of planning.
Surveying the Evolution of Required Studio Courses, 1955-2011
Source: Data for 1955, 1965, 1975, and 1984 are from Heumann and Wetmore (1984, 123). Data for 2011 are based on surveys of individual programs by the author. Data for Pennsylvania from 1955 through 1975 were missing from the 1984 study.
Note: ■ sequence of required studio(s); □ no studio required in that semester; • single required studio course; ❖ studio required, but choice among offerings, and in some cases, choice of timing among semesters.
Adding depth to our understanding of studio courses offerings during this period, Heumann and Wetmore (1984, followed by Wetmore and Heumann 1988) updated the Adams study by reinterviewing, in 1984, the senior faculty associated with “workshop” courses in ten of the same planning programs that Adams studied in 1954. 3 Based on these interviews, Heumann and Wetmore argued that there were two distinct subphases of studio instruction between 1900 and 1945, identifiable by differences in content. The first subphase, from 1900 to 1920, was characterized primarily by concern with “beauty and order,” with studio courses mimicking the concerns and practice of the leading practitioners, who were also the leading educators. The second subphase, from 1920 to 1945, “emphasized systematizing and institutionalizing a process by which cities were analyzed and plans were developed” (Heumann and Wetmore 1984, 120), and were concerned with standardizing plans for public works, zoning, fiscal responsibility, and urban renewal. Notably, Heumann and Wetmore also report that “both faculty members and practitioners worked together to develop a system of plan analysis and implementation,” and that permanent faculty often worked to publicize the work done in these courses (Heumann and Wetmore 1984, 120). A collegial attitude toward sharing the responsibilities of teaching was possible and necessary, because at this time practitioner faculty often outnumbered full-time academic faculty, thus holding positions of power in the academic setting along with—and often because of—the prestige associated with their professional practice.
Phase II: Studio Dethroned, 1960s to 1970s
Starting in the 1960s, the second phase of planning studio history was characterized by a movement away from “planning seen as a design profession to planning seen as a branch of applied social science” (Forester 1983). This so-called quiet revolution fomented the creation of several new planning programs, many concerned primarily with informing public policy as viewed through the lenses of political science, sociology, and economics among others. Urban conditions were changing rapidly, and the social sciences were thought to provide both the rationality and analytic techniques that had been absent in physically oriented planning.
Planning education, in response, became a mission of “training generalists with a specialty” based in a “core curriculum that would form the foundation for more specialized training in planning and for the continuing process of learning which should take place on the job” (Perloff 1957, 35). The impact on studio courses was “the fission of the planning workshop into separate parts reflecting, and perhaps leading, the separation of the profession into distinct and self-contained sub-parts” representing the functional areas of concern to planners at that time, such as housing, transportation, economy, etc. (Heumann and Wetmore 1984, 120). For studio courses, this meant that specialized topics and specialized clients—often aligned along areas of concentration—began replacing the practitioner as the point of “real world” contact and medium of comprehensive synthesis.
The data on studio courses from this period also point to a transition away from studio dominance (Table 1). Heumann and Wetmore, in their 1984 update of the 1954 Adams study, find the workshop course markedly changed between 1955 and 1985. In 1955, all ten schools studied required a two- to three-semester sequence of workshops. By 1965, the sequence is still in place, but four schools have reduced the number of courses in the sequence. By 1975, only four of ten schools retain a sequence of workshops (with two of these reducing the number required), and four schools require no workshop at all. By 1985, the sequence has all but disappeared, replaced by new single-semester workshops or the requirement of a workshop within a dedicated area of concentration (1984, 122). 4
The role of studio in these long-running programs, however, turns out to be different from that found in the many new planning schools opened after 1960. Between 1954 and 1985, the number of schools offering master’s degrees in planning in the United States had more than tripled from eighteen programs to sixty-five. Wetmore and Heumann (1988, 137), in their subsequent study of studio courses, expanded the population to include all sixty-five accredited master’s-degree programs in the United States, and found that 72 percent of these programs required one studio, while 65 percent required two or more. Comparing 1954 to 1985, there is a decrease in the number of programs requiring at least one studio, down from 100 percent to 72 percent, as well as a decrease in the duration of the studio experience, down from three semesters to one or two. Partitioning the results by older and new programs, Wetmore and Heumann found the greatest amount of studio course reduction in the older programs. Among the original sample of ten long-running programs, only 36 percent were requiring studio courses in 1985, compared to 72 percent across all programs, new and old combined.
Given that these older programs were more likely to have started with higher amounts of required studio as a baseline figure, this finding is perhaps not so surprising. Older programs were also more likely to be larger programs, and thus were more likely to offer PhD programs that in turn required a more diverse range of course offerings. Wetmore and Heumann also point to a change in the role of studio courses over this period, from a position of curriculum dominance where other courses served as support, to studio courses as a synthetic capstone course at the end of studies, effectively supporting the preceding lecture-style courses as well as specific areas of concentration. In effect, this reshuffling of curricular priorities formalized the emerging dominance of the social sciences, and relegated practice-oriented learning to a secondary role.
There were other factors driving the changing role of studio courses after 1960. Diminishing confidence in the sequence of the workshop is one explanation, tied to increasing criticism of rationality and of the comprehensive plan. Another is that studio courses were “squeezed out” by the need to introduce areas of concentration in response to market demands for depth in a functional concern of planning, and for increased analytic methods training in that area. Yet another is that a new version of the introductory workshop or studio was being developed and deployed that attempted to integrate multiple subjects, notably planning theory, into the first semester of education, often taught by teams of faculty members and practitioners, and making heavy use of case study instruction and group work approaches (Heumann and Wetmore 1984, 123-24). Pragmatic concerns were not insignificant: studios are expensive because of the low instructor-to-student ratio, the cost of hiring outside instructors and traveling to sites, and the need for large areas of dedicated student work space, as well as special representational equipment and supplies, including specialized computer software and large format plotters.
Stage 3: Studio Restored? 1990s Onward
Despite burgeoning interest in the social sciences, some faculty members raised concerns about the diminished role of studio-based learning and the implications for planning curricula. Beginning in the 1980s, a number of articles were published advocating for studio courses, including Forester (1983), Jacobs (1983), Lang (1983), Chatterjee (1986), Kreditor (1990), and Dagenhart and Sawicki (1992), who argued that regardless of labels “we need to find a way to restore them to their proper place in our curricula” (Chatterjee 1986, 7). These authors argued against the declining role of physical planning and urban design in the education of planners and to the declining number of studio-based courses as a means to those ends. Forester (1983, 57) aptly describes the swinging of the pedagogic pendulum:
Design suffered as both a practical activity and as a significant intellectual enterprise. This was the real quiet revolution of the planning profession in the last twenty years: the displacement, if not the denigration, of design practices as a fundamental aspect of the planning profession and the simultaneous intellectual submersion, if not the ridicule, of the serious aesthetic, ethical, and political questions that designers necessarily confront in the work. The profession gained analytic sophistication, but suffered synthetic impoverishment.
Forester continues his argument on an optimistic note, forecasting that during the remainder of the 1980s we were likely to see the skills and practices of designers reintegrated into planning education.
Another call for the return to studio-based learning came via renewed interest in practice-based education, itself a challenge to the hegemony of the social sciences in planning curricula. During the 1990s, articles by Christensen (1993), Wachs (1994), Baum (1995, 1997), Friedmann (1996), and more broadly, Birch (2001) and Dalton (2001) among others, advocated for teaching practice, albeit with a broader framework than that used earlier in the century, since their arguments also extended to research-oriented practice. These authors argue for a recalibration of practice-based learning, and further, that such courses ought to be taught by practitioners, and/or by academic faculty trained to facilitate experiential learning. Baum describes the tension of academic faculty teaching in professional schools, revealing a “hidden curriculum” that “teaches the superiority of academic work over practice, and in many ways the program culture ascribes higher status to academic faculty” (1997, 24). While not explicitly advocating for studio courses, these authors suggest that experience-based learning—including studios and internships—is the most appropriate approach to teaching practice. That these practice-based learning arguments draw from, directly and indirectly, the development of engaged learning theory (discussed later in this paper) is no coincidence.
In a similar vein, planning programs also began to incorporate “work-based learning” experiences—alongside similar notions called “experiential learning” and “cooperative education”—into their curricula in the late 1970s and early 1980s, although there are no studies that examine this phenomenon in planning education systematically. Thus as the role of studio pedagogy declined, the role of work-based learning experiences increased as a kind of substitute or variation, involving a range of models including internships and service learning (Baum 1997; Roakes and Norris-Tirrell 2000; Freestone, Thompson, and Williams 2006; Sletto 2010). The idea of student learning through external work experiences raises several issues that mirror delivery problems in studio courses, including resourcing and cost-effectiveness, the unpredictability of workplace settings, assessment and customization of learning goals and outcomes, the issue of collaboration across occupational and organizational boundaries, and matching learner needs and the educational potential of the workplace. Moreover, these work-based learning experiences yield criticisms similar to studio pedagogy, mainly in that the student learning outcomes are not particularly well understood. Freestone, Thompson, and Williams (2006), channeling Baum, succinctly capture the state of the theory on work-based experiences as follows: “work-based learning ultimately remains a rite of passage into planning practice that can only be negotiated individually . . . at the end of the day, practice is best learned by practicing.”
Since all three of these movements are well suited to studio-based learning—whether they emphasized the built environment, practice-based learning, and/or experiential learning—their success should be indicated by the nature and magnitude of studio offerings in planning programs. To a limited extent, the data bear this out. My analysis of the role of planning studios in 2009—exactly one hundred years after the first course in city planning was offered at Harvard in 1909—confirms that most planning programs now require their students to participate in some form of studio-based learning (Table 2). In most cases, these studio courses represent a comparatively small portion of total program hours and are timed as requirements in the second year of the program as capstone courses tailored to areas of concentration and student interests (Table 1). These findings are based on an analysis of U.S.-based graduate planning programs, appearing in the 2009 edition of the ACSP Guide to Undergraduate and Graduate Education in Urban and Regional Planning.
Studio Courses in U.S.-Based Graduate Planning Programs, 2009
Source: 2009 ACSP Guide to Undergraduate and Graduate Education in Urban and Regional Planning, 15th edition.
Note: Studio is defined as including workshop, practicum, and client-based courses. Seventy-two programs provided breakdowns of their program hours in the 2009 ACSP guide. Ten programs without these figures were not included. Undergraduate programs were not included. The number of required studio courses is an estimate based on actual program data in combination with estimates based on studio course hours relative to typical course loads in a given program.
Looking at these data more closely, among the programs in the 2009 ACSP Guide, 84 percent require studio courses as part of their core curriculum, when studio is defined broadly to include its curricular cousins the “workshop,” “practicum,” and “client-based” course formats (Table 2). 5 In these programs, the average student experience would include 10 percent of total program hours in studio courses. In the vast majority of programs, these required studios were offered during the second year of two-year programs. The range of required program hours spent in studio courses ranged from more than 25 percent (in self-described “studio-based” programs) to zero percent (in “policy” programs).
What do these figures tell us about the role of studio today? Certainly, the fact that most programs require at least some time spent in studio courses can be viewed as widespread confidence in the value of studio pedagogy. Moreover, the snapshot data from 2009 suggest that on average, a little bit of studio is about right for most graduate programs, given that the faculty of each individual program make curricular decisions that best serve their educational goals. Importantly, there is no requirement for one size to fit all; there are some programs that value studio highly and others that choose to focus on other approaches to the exclusion of studio. Opinions on the import of studio also vary within programs, as individual faculty often have different opinions on the matter of how much time should be spent in studio.
Looking more closely at the state of the studio in specific programs, I build on the longitudinal data provided in Heumann and Wetmore’s 1984 study by extending the overall data set from 1955 to 2011 (Table 1). My analysis considers the same ten programs in 2011 based on curriculum information, syllabus reviews, and follow-up interviews with program faculty. I examine changes in the role of the studio (or workshop, practica, etc.) in each program, specifically its weight (number of required courses, number of credits), sequence (timing of required courses), and whether or not students had choices among topic areas that would reflect their areas of concentration, and/or if students had choices about course timing.
Based on this analysis, I find that the role of the studio course in 2011 is quite different from the preceding periods (Table 1). The most visibly dramatic change is the shift in timing of required studio courses to later stages of programs, as is the case in eight of the ten programs. My review of the program curricula confirms that the requirement of a studio course in the second year is intended to serve as a capstone experience, reflecting the primary learning objective associated with studio courses: synthesis. For example, in Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s current program description, its practicum course is intended to “provide the opportunity to synthesize planning solutions within the constraints of a client-based project.” Pragmatically, it can be argued that students in their second year of a program may be better equipped to take advantage of the learning approach offered by studios. In addition, these capstone courses can offer opportunities for collaboration with other disciplines. At Harvard, for example, students in their third or fourth semester of the planning program can take studio courses in any department of the school, including architecture and landscape architecture. Also, in some programs students can choose the format of their capstone project; at the University of Illinois/Chicago, for example, students can choose to complete a thesis or a studio course.
Another change evident in studio course offerings in 2011 is the high degree of choice in subject matter. This is in part due to the need for multiple sections: since studio courses typically feature low instructor-to-student ratios—estimated to average approximately 1:15 among these ten programs for example—most programs have to offer more than one section to serve the number of students who need the course to graduate. Moreover, since there are few economies of scale in delivering studio courses, most programs make a virtue of necessity by finding positive synergies with their teaching and research specializations, as well as community outreach objectives or other agendas. As examples, Cornell, Georgia Tech, and University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill offer a wide range of studio choices, often changing each year, that are tied to their broader research missions, and are featured on their websites as demonstrations of program breadth and as showcases for outreach activities that undoubtedly appeal to prospective students.
It is interesting to find that, even within this small sample, programs are making a significant effort to engage their full-time faculty as instructors in required studios, rather than relying heavily on outsourcing to part-time or contract practitioner faculty. Both Georgia Tech and UIC have an impressively high ratio of full-time faculty teaching in their required studios. The current UIC program has made a concerted effort to integrate plan making into its core curriculum at both the beginning (via required common workshop) and end (via choice of capstone studio), in what may be the only visible effort among these ten programs to keep elements of the old and the new. Moreover, full-time faculty members at UIC are encouraged to teach in these courses, whether or not they have studio experience, as a means of strengthening the program mission.
The relationship between the role of a workshop and a studio also appears to have reached some resolution in two of these programs. For example, at the University of Pennsylvania, workshops target the development of specific skills that are developed through a series of short, finite exercises that do not necessarily build on one another but prepare students for work in studio in the second year. Harvard, as another example, combines a separate skills workshop that operates simultaneously with a studio course in its first semester, where skills and methods introduced in the workshop are almost immediately applied in the studio. In these settings, workshops use mixed learning approaches, including a combination of lectures, demonstrations, labs, field trips, and exercises. Studios in these programs, by contrast, are taught along traditional lines featuring an open-ended problem that is the focus of attention over the entire semester. Yet we remain far from consensus on terminology: among the ten programs, three use “studio,” two use “practicum,” four use “workshop,” and one uses “problem-solving workshop.”
One significant limitation of my analysis is the absence of data on elective studios, largely because it is much harder to track these data across even a small sample of ten programs let alone the population of graduate programs in the United States. Another limitation is the relatively small sample of programs surveyed in detail in 2011, yet this too is present in the preexisting longitudinal data provided by Heumann and Wetmore. Nonetheless, these ten programs continue to represent a fair cross section of planning programs, and the trends witnessed here are—at least anecdotally—in keeping with the experiences related to me by colleagues during presentations of this paper at conferences.
In summary, my review of the history of studio pedagogy argues that studio courses play a markedly diminished role in educating professional planners in the United States, when compared to their role a century ago. Studio pedagogy is no longer dominant, nor does it play a significant role in the earliest stages of planning education. Instead studio is valued as a way to provide a synthetic experience toward the end of the program. In this way, studio courses aim to simulate practice through the medium of a client-based relationship, while also introducing students to the norms and values of the planning profession, and providing opportunities for field-based experiences and peer-based learning along the way.
Yet my interpretation of these historical accounts also reveals our diminished aspirations for studio-based learning. It may be that our focus on learning objectives such as synthesis, teaching practice, and arguments in favor of privileging built environment concerns may in fact be subverting other important benefits associated with studio pedagogy. While it is a central purpose of this paper to consider what has been lost in our movement away from studio pedagogy, it is of equal importance to frame its future utility. Are there other educational objectives that might be met by studio-based learning? To answer this question, I look to education theory to explain the unique learning attributes associated with studio pedagogy, and assess its potential and limitations in addressing the challenges in contemporary planning education.
Why Studio?
Part I: Views from Planning Literature
A review of planning literature on studio pedagogy in the United States reveals a set of learning objectives commonly associated with planning studios. For example, a survey of JPER articles argues that studio courses are uniquely suited for teaching “synthesis,” “learning-by-doing,” and “reflection-in-action,” while also aiming to expose students to the complexity of “real-world problems” and initiating “professional socialization ” (Chafee 1977; Schön 1983, 1987; Heumann and Wetmore 1984; Wetmore and Heumann 1988; Baum 1997; Forester 1983; among others). More specifically, Heumann and Wetmore (1984, 124) enumerate and rank the most common expressed learning objectives in their landmark survey of studio instructors:
Synthesis: to provide a synthesis experience applying judgment and values in selecting and applying analytical methods and plan-making procedures in the formulation and resolution of professional problems.
Teamwork: to learn the professional planning approach—that is, the use of teamwork and the contribution of special competencies from the several team members to problem analysis and solution.
Comprehensive planning approach: to become familiar with, and have experience with, the integrating perspectives of the comprehensive planning approach.
Introduction: to provide an introduction to the field, integrating basic core courses in elementary problems.
Professional socialization: to provide a professional socializing experience.
In-depth problem: to provide an in-depth problem-solving experience for advanced students.
Contract: to provide a real world/client working experience.
Adaptation of procedures to real cases: to provide experience in adapting planning procedures to actual case situations.
Field experience with methods: to provide field experience in applying survey and analytical methods.
Among this set of pedagogical objectives, “synthesis” remains the term most commonly associated with studio pedagogy in planning literature, where students apply judgment and values in selecting and applying analytical methods and plan-making procedures in the formulation and resolution of professional problems. 6 “Learning-by-doing,” emanating from Schön’s cognitive foundation of “reflection-in-action,” is another hallmark of our discourse on studio courses, where individual students and groups of students “gain tacit knowledge through work on subsequent iterations under the guidance and criticism of a master practitioner” (1985, 6). ( Schön’s work in this area may be the one pedagogical tome that planners know by title.) Introducing students to “real-world” and even “wicked problems” (Rittel and Weber 1973) is also an important objective found in the literature about planning studios, although studios are not unique in this accommodation; lecture and seminar courses also effectively address these learning goals. Lastly, “professional socialization” is an important, albeit often tacit, objective reported in the studio literature, where students are introduced to the role of the planner in the plan-making process, as well as to a “community of practice” and its social norms. By learning to solve problems under the guidance of a specific practitioner, they are exposed to the value and belief systems of their instructor as revealed in his or her planning principles and mode of practice.
These theoretical objectives are not reflected in the same priority when reviewing course syllabi. Based on an analysis of more than forty course syllabi for studio courses offered between 2009 and 2011, as well as in follow-up interviews with instructors (Németh and Long 2012, this issue), there are some differences in the set of objectives expressed, their relative weight, and the language used (Table 3). There are also distinctions between what was written in course syllabi and how instructors described their objectives in follow-up interviews, an indication of the lack of a common language—between the literature and the instructors—for describing studio pedagogy.
A Survey of Learning Outcomes in Studio Courses, 2009-2011
Source: From Németh and Long (2012, this issue).
There are also a number of articles that describe the potential of studio courses in meeting specific learning goals. Although this is not a comprehensive list, some exemplars of the form might include the following: Banerjee (1985), Sanyal (1989), and Abramson (2005) on the potential of studio in engaging international planning issues; Forsyth, Lu, and McGirr (2000), Hoyt (2005), and Sletto (2010) on service learning; Grant and Manuel (1995) on peer-based learning in studios; Ozawa and Seltzer (1999) on the relationships between communicative theory and planning education; Christensen (1993) on teaching aspects of practice; Mahyar and Triantafillou (2005) on urban design; Kuhn (2001) and Thompson (2002) on the use of studio pedagogy in teaching engineering design; Higgins and Morgan (2000) on creativity in planning; as well as Shulman (2004, 2005) on “signature pedagogies” and professional education for doctors, lawyers, and managers.
Viewed collectively, these writings are relatively disparate threads that have not yet coalesced into a larger conversation, regardless of how well they meet the more narrowly defined needs of audiences interested in specific applications. Our colleagues in other countries are also beginning to ask these questions; for example, Higgins, Aitken-Rose, and Dixon (2009) report that studios in Australian planning schools are under review, and argue for an evolution in the approach that accommodates emerging educational needs. The University of New South Wales, Australia, launched the Studio Teaching Project (STP) to rethink the objectives of studio courses in its art and design programs, with the goal of improving the skills of teaching faculty and transforming the student experience, providing lessons that are transferable to planning (studioteaching.org). Despite this modest evidence of a resurgent interest in studio pedagogy globally, the planning literature has not corralled the theoretical underpinnings necessary to move the discourse forward.
There is a strong amount of interest in better understanding the theories that underlay studio pedagogy. At the 2009 and 2010 meetings of ACSP, there were three separate sessions devoted exclusively to studio pedagogy in planning, generating thirteen research papers and including more than two hundred audience members. 7 The question-and-answer sessions revealed a high amount of interest in learning more about studio-based learning, as well as a need for more resources for studio instructors, particularly for those new to academe. Even faculty members with long experience teaching studio courses were interested in the next stage in its evolution, relating how they were grappling with questions of how to engage technology and social media, to produce meaningful research, to engage theory, and to imagine new ways that planners might practice.
Part II: Views from Education Theory
One way of informing the future potential of studio pedagogy is to review its roots—its pedagogical roots—viewed through the lens of education theory. As formal planning education emerged in the early twentieth century, it did so in tandem with the flowering of education theory as a field of inquiry. Viewed in this manner, the path of studio-type courses as an approach to teaching planning has been navigated alongside some of the most influential thinking about education.
Education theory offers five broad models that shed light on questions of how we teach planning. These models are (1) behaviorist, (2) humanist, (3) cognitivist, (4) activist, and (5) situated learning models, with the latter four generally considered to be subsets of the constructivist school. 8 Most of our approaches to educating planners can be situated among these five models, from the lecture (behaviorist), to seminar (humanist), to workshop (cognitivist and activist), to the studio (situated learning), although there are nuances to placement, and overlaps. Table 4 provides a summary of the five education theory models, each considered in terms of its epistemological frame, the origin of learning goals, names of its influential thinkers, the methods of learning, the pedagogical approach, and the implications for curriculum design, among others (abridged from Cunningham et al. 2007).
Education Theory: Major Learning Models
Source: Adapted and abridged from Cunningham et al. (2007).
Behaviorist model
The earliest of the major educational theories, the behaviorist model is important to this study of studio pedagogy mainly for what it is not: in short, the behaviorist model does not do a good job of explaining the benefits of studio pedagogy. What it does do well is explain the pros and cons of traditional lecture courses.
The epistemological basis of the behaviorist model is that all knowledge is finite. Behaviorism posits that knowledge is acquired through conditioning, where this conditioning occurs through interaction with the environment, and that learning is defined by the outward expression of new behaviors. In behaviorism, behavior can be studied in a systematic and observable manner with no consideration of internal mental states and thus it is a form of materialism that denies independent significance for the mind (drawing on Pavlov 1927; Watson 1930; and Skinner 1953, 1971, and 1976 9 ).
Readers with an undergraduate psychology course under their belts will recall that there are two major types of conditioning: (1) classical conditioning (stimulus–response) and (2) operant conditioning (reward–punishment).
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A famous quote from Watson (1930) provocatively sums up his view on behaviorist theory, sitting squarely on the “nurture” side of the nature–nurture debate:
Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief—regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.
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The implications of the behaviorist model for pedagogy is that “learning exists in a traditional didactic format, where the lecturer is seen as the expert in disseminating knowledge” (Cunningham et al. 2007, 5), controlling the environment, and offering rewards when students respond in the desired manner. In lay terms, this model is the basis of “chalk and talk” approaches found in highly structured lecture courses, where the responsibility for student learning rests solely with the teacher. Learning takes place in a linear, serial pattern, where each step (stimulus) produces a specific result. Criticisms of behaviorism—that eventually formed the basis of the subsequent models presented below—include its passive stance on student learning, the need for complete control over the learning environment, and the lack of external stimuli; moreover, behaviorism theory does not take into account processes that take place in the mind, and are thus not observable.
Humanist model
As one of the schools that was formed as a reaction against behaviorism, the humanist model argues that knowledge is infinite rather than finite, and that knowledge acquisition is a process. According to the humanist model, humans have an innate desire to learn and the potential for growth of individual learners is boundless if they are empowered to have control over the learning process (Cunningham et al. 2007, 9). Humanist models seek to engage the “whole person” (combining “feelings” with “knowledge”) by encouraging choice and control over educational paths, emphasizing self-evaluation and ultimately self-actualization, where the teacher is a facilitator (drawing on Maslow 1943, 1954; Dewey 1916; Rogers 1969). According to Rogers (1969), “A person cannot teach another person directly; a person can only facilitate another’s learning.”
In the humanist model, learning is discovery based and student centered, rather than teacher centered. Through reflection and critical inquiry, learning is not purely about the acquisition of knowledge but is also about the development of the whole person. No stimulus is required, as learners take care of their own learning needs (Cunningham et al. 2007, 10). The learner is involved at all stages. Learning is viewed as an entire experience, with insights gained throughout, from beginning to end. This model is the basis for some of the alternative education models observed today, such as the Waldorf and Montessori school systems.
The key implication of the humanist model for pedagogy is the value of a “mixed mode” approach—including self-guided assignments, student group discussions, and one-on-one meetings—probing individual learners to ascertain that the learning process is continuing. To aid our understanding of the value of studio pedagogy in planning, the humanist model points to the value of discovery based learning, to validate and create opportunities where students lead their own learning. To ensure that learning keeps pace, there may be times when the teacher is more involved than others. While certainly there are aspects of studio courses that correspond to this learning approach, it is not clear that this is an expressed desired outcome rather than an unintended externality of the studio format.
Cognitivist or “information processing” model
The cognitivist model also emerged as a reaction to the behaviorist model and yet is distinct from the humanist model. Its epistemological framework is that meaningful information is easier to learn and remember if a learner links it with previously acquired knowledge schema; in this way knowledge acquisition is also a process, but one of a sequence of steps. In the cognitivist model, knowledge is stored in the mind in the form of symbols, and learning is the process of connecting symbols in a meaningful and memorable way.
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Thus, cognitive studies focus on the mental processes that facilitate symbol connection (drawing on Piaget 1970, 1985; Bruner 1956, 1960, 1966; and in the case of studio pedagogy in planning, Schön 1983, 1985, 1987, 1991). In the words of Bruner (1966, 72),
To instruct someone . . . is not a matter of getting him to commit results to mind. Rather, it is to teach him to participate in the process that makes possible the establishment of knowledge. We teach a subject not to produce little living libraries on that subject, but rather to get a student to think (mathematically) for himself, to consider matters as an historian does, to take part in the process of knowledge-getting. Knowing is a process not a product.
The impact of this model for pedagogy is to acknowledge that individual learners “may arrive at key points of insight at different stages, depending on how well they organize and reorganize information,” and that “depending on cognitive abilities, opportunities for group work may arise” (Cunningham et al. 2007, 16). Teachers must be aware that the learning process involves continuous acquisition and reorganization of knowledge until the learner achieves insight through addressing a problem. For our understanding of studio pedagogy, the contribution of this model lies in our understanding as educators that learning is a process that varies between students, particularly in settings where knowledge acquisition is peer managed. In studio courses, knowledge acquisition varies dramatically from student to student, and improves where there are opportunities to monitor progress.
Activity or “social learning” model
The activity model, along with the following situated learning model, will likely resonate with most studio instructors. The epistemological basis of the activity model is centered on the idea that learning is a process of constructing knowledge, and that people create their own meaning through experience. Eponymously, learning in this model is activity or task oriented, and relies on social interactions among learners to construct knowledge. Learners seek to determine what knowledge is needed, and how it is to be applied, to complete the activity. Thus, the strategy intentionally seeks to create knowledge in a manner that is characterized by taking action (Cunningham et al. 2007, 17).
By embracing a “top down” approach that “advocates rather than teaching all of the details that lead to a main idea, students discover the main idea and derive the details” (drawing on Vygotsky 1978; Bandura and Walters 1963; Boud and Feletti 1997; and Boud and Walker 1998). For example, Vygotksy’s “zone of proximal development” is one of constructivism’s big ideas, defining the distance between the "actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving” and “the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.”
The implications for pedagogy are that students are no longer passive recipients of knowledge, but instead play a key role in questioning what knowledge is required and then acquiring that knowledge. Learning is distributed among teacher(s) and is co-created or collaboratively constructed through negotiation with others, based on the introduction of an activity and the necessity of social interaction. The choice, structure, and challenge level of the activity is critical in determining the collaborative process and the sequence of learning (Cunningham et al. 2007, 19). Outcomes tend to be capability based, as students often have different capabilities coming in to the course, and will develop different capabilities (at different speeds, to different depths) depending on a variety of factors such as the path they choose to follow and their ability to engage socially.
Situated learning or participatory model
In what is perhaps the best match for studio-based learning of the five models presented, the situated learning or participatory model focuses on the connection between context, social environment, and learning. In valuing context, the situated learning model recognizes that learning is a function of the culture in which it occurs, and is more meaningful when learned in an authentic context and situation. Learning is “situated” within a specific task, a specific culture, and a specific social environment. Building on the activity-based model, social interaction is a critical component of situated learning, as learners become involved in a community of practice that embodies certain beliefs and behaviors (drawing on Lave and Wenger 1990; Billet 1996). More specifically, Lave and Wenger state (1990, 134):
Participating in the practices of a professional community, under the supervision and guidance of mentors, gives individuals access to that profession’s repertoire of ways of seeing and solving problems.
The implications for pedagogy are that situated learning is typically “practice centered” and, similar to the activity model, the types of learning are different for each student depending on their abilities, competency, and knowledge. In situated learning, the environment or context is critical because it determines the community of practice that the learner is immersed in, gives the tasks meaningful purpose, and its procedures and structures also arise from specification of this context (Cunningham et al. 2007, 22). The thinking process is complex and the capabilities of the learner can change or alternate as new tasks arise. As pertains to studio pedagogy, clearly context is king, in both the sense of cultural assimilation anticipated with exposure to real-world problems and practitioners as well as the literal context of the site.
Relating education theory to studio pedagogy
What does this review of education theory tell us about planning studios? First, by situating studio-type learning in the avant-garde of learning theory, studio appears to be back in fashion. Its origins may lie in the medieval guild system of the sixteenth century, but in the twenty-first century studios are reborn as “situated learning,” and sit comfortably alongside variations such as “problem-based,” “project-based,” and “practice-based” learning approaches found in business, medical, and engineering schools today. (Although the comparatively high delivery cost of this kind of education is threatening its continued development.) While studio-based learning is often more effective for students on the basis of class size alone (e.g., more direct contact with instructor leads to better educational outcomes in general), education theory helps us understand why and how studio-based teaching is so different from the learning approach in traditional lectures and seminars.
Second, by situating studio pedagogy in education theory more broadly, we can begin to see possibilities for studio courses in planning that move beyond teaching practice, plan making, and serving as a point of synthesis. These are important objectives to be sure, and should be safeguarded, but should not restrict us from exploring the potential of studio courses beyond the traditional domain of planning studios. For example, planning studios should be seen as a place where creativity can be taught, where theory can be tested, where research can be conducted, where outreach and service activities can be deployed, and where different modes of practice can be explored. An interesting and fun example of this is the use of comedy improvisation in the studio setting as a means to unleash individual and collaborative creativity (Inam 2010).
In disciplines outside of planning, project-based teaching may be a rich source of ideas for embracing new learning objectives in planning studios. For example, Shulman (2005, 53) presents a categorization of objectives in professional education based on the idea that pedagogical styles typically comprise three types of apprenticeships: (1) a cognitive apprenticeship that teaches one to think like a member of the profession, (2) a practical apprenticeship that teaches one to perform like a member of the profession, and (3) a moral apprenticeship that teaches one to think and act in a professionally responsible and ethical manner.
Third, situated learning theory provides theoretical and practical guidance for our actions in the studio setting. For example, “engaged learning theory” is a subset of situated learning theory, with a set of characteristics that sound a lot like our aspirations for studio courses although these are rarely expressed in syllabi (Jones et al. 1994, 213):
Engaged learners are responsible for their own learning. These students are self-regulated and able to define their own learning goals and evaluate their own achievement. They are also energized by their learning; their joy of learning leads to a lifelong passion for solving problems, understanding, and taking the next step in their thinking. These learners are strategic in that they know how to learn and are able to transfer knowledge to solve problems creatively. Engaged learning also involves being collaborative—that is, valuing and having the skills to work with others.
If we delve deeper into the engaged learning theory literature, we find theoretical propositions that read like a checklist for the best kinds of studio courses, offering a possible framework for understanding the unique value of studio, as well as clues to a common language for its instructional strategies. For example, engaged learning theory argues for tasks that are “challenging, authentic, multidisciplinary, and complex, involving sustained amounts of time” (studio: check). Assessing educational outcomes of engaged learning involves “presenting students with an authentic task, project, or investigation, and then observing, interviewing, and examining their presentations and artifacts to assess what they actually know and can do” (studio: check). Instruction approaches should “actively engage the learner” and “encourage the learner to construct and produce knowledge in meaningful ways” (studio: check). For their part, students “teach others interactively and interact generatively with their teacher and peers” allowing for “co-construction of knowledge, which promotes engaged learning that is problem-, project-, and goal-based” (studio: check). Some common instructional strategies include “individual and group summarizing, means of exploring multiple perspectives, techniques for building upon prior knowledge, brainstorming, Socratic dialogue, problem-solving processes, and team teaching” (studio: check) (Jones et al. 1994).
Another thread within situated learning theory of interest to studio educators is the emerging concept of “thick authenticity” in practice-based learning. Cognitive theorists refer to as a “thickly authentic” educational experience as one where “personally meaningful projects are produced and assessed according to the epistemological and procedural norms of an external community” (Shaffer 2003, 40). Studio courses ask students to participate in the practices of a community, in a “thick” process that is at once “inherently social and deeply individual,” where students develop understanding by internalizing social processes of evaluation. In this sense, the norms of community become a framework for individual thinking and individual identity. “Authenticity” is the alignment between learning activities and some combination of (1) goals that matter to the community outside the classroom, (2) goals that are personally meaningful to the student, (3) ways of thinking within an established discipline, and (4) the means of assessment (Shaffer and Resnick 1999, 196). “Thick authenticity” is when these occur simultaneously. Thus, in a manner that is substantially different from traditional lectures and seminars, studio courses offer potential for this kind of student experience, regardless of whether the substantive concern is physical planning or design.
Reinvigorating Studio Dialogues in Planning
On Definitions
No standard vocabulary exists presently for studio pedagogy in planning. My findings relate that U.S.-based planning programs routinely use terms including studio, workshop, practicum, or client-based study interchangeably, with little consistency in definition either within terms (e.g., two programs using the term workshop may mean different things by it), or across programs (e.g., a studio at one school is a practicum at another). Consistency for its own sake is not necessary, and may even be undesirable; however, some movement toward a common vocabulary would benefit future discussions and research. The term studio, for example, although privileged in this article for its historical roots in planning education, may not be the best term to describe the role of these kinds of courses going forward. It would also be valuable to produce a primer on studio pedagogy, both for instructors and for students.
Consistency issues aside, some definitions and labels present tensions. For example, does it matter if “planning studios” can be labeled as “design studios”? Yes, it matters if the counterfactual is to suggest that planners do not—or by extension cannot—engage in the act of design. Indeed, “design” is precisely the activity planners engage in when they create a plan, or policy, or regulation, regardless of its physical specificity or lack thereof. To “design” is “to create, fashion, construct or execute according to plan,” “to conceive and plan out in the mind,” “to have a purpose,” “to devise for a specific function or end”—there is no strict hegemony of those who create specific kinds of designs for buildings or landscapes found here. Moreover, to suggest that creativity in design is limited to the production of objects with intrinsic artistic value devalues the creative capacity of virtually every other profession, from medicine to law, and so forth. New drugs are designed; new laws are designed. In our minor profession of planning, land use plans are designed; housing policies are designed; public participation strategies are designed. Viewed in this manner, a more developed vocabulary for studio pedagogy could benefit, or at least clarify, discussions about pedagogy across disciplines.
On Histories
The historical accounts of the role and influence of studio courses in planning programs teach us that its contemporary state is one of comparatively lessened influence. Today, most planning students have to take a studio course to graduate, but only one. The average student spends about ten percent of his or her program hours in a required studio, where the course is positioned as a capstone course in the second year, and students are able to choose among different topics to develop their specific interests. My findings also reveal that more full-time faculty are teaching these required studio courses, which is good news because it can be argued that the attention of full-time academic faculty to studio teaching makes all the difference given their unique capacity to integrate both intellectual and practical concerns. Certainly the literature suggests that many innovations are coming from full-time faculty, although of course this is a premise based on self-selection: academics are far more likely to submit articles on educational topics to scholarly journals than are our fellow practitioner instructors, and as a general rule our submittals are borne of successes in the classroom rather than reflections on our failures.
This history also informs the “three bear” question of how much time planning students should spend in studio. If the majority of U.S.-based programs now require at least one studio course, is this the right amount, too little, or too much? Recall that advocates of teaching practice launched a campaign in the 1980s and 1990s that asked for more studio-type learning in response to a decline in studio offerings in the 1960s and 1970s. While there is no study that asks these same advocates whether this one course average is what they had in mind, it is reasonable to suggest that since many of these advocates remain highly regarded planning academics, they have exercised some influence over these decisions in their home programs and as members of planning academy organizations. It may also be that this trend also represents a kind of compromise. Since these capstone studios can rightly claim to be intellectually synthetic, this broadens their appeal to faculty members less concerned with teaching practice. Another possible explanation, albeit somewhat convenient in its ambivalence, is that the role of studio courses in the contemporary planning curriculum is “right-sized” to contemporary needs. That is, as faculty we constantly recalibrate course offerings to meet an ever-changing scope of subject matter, in concert with increasing demands from students for curricular flexibility.
Without further study of the role of studio courses in contemporary planning programs, it is difficult to gauge whether one studio course is enough. Since ideally we would match the education required to the best means of delivering it, then rethinking the potential of studio pedagogy might expand our ideas of what can be taught in studio. Historically, studio courses taught plan making exclusively, but today, most students can choose from a range of studio topics that may or may not include plan making. In most programs, these offerings typically align with program specializations and areas of concentrations, but there is evidence of experimentation in studio topic and format (e.g., service learning, technology) although these are the exception rather than the rule. Future research on studio pedagogy, then, might seek to inform the potential and challenges associated with expanding studio courses to accommodate subject areas beyond its core strength as a space for teaching practice through plan making.
On Theories
Reviewing the education theories that underlay studio pedagogy is essential to reinvigorate dialogues that seek to improve our understanding of this unique pedagogy and to explore its potential as a way of teaching planning beyond its practice orientation. My reading of education theory positions studio pedagogy for planning education in the “situated learning theory” model, where learning is problem or activity centered, where the learning context is key, and the types of learning are different for each student depending on his or her abilities, competency, and knowledge. As examples of the power of this model in explaining the power of studio courses, I describe how studios accommodate “engaged learning” and provide “thickly authentic” learning experiences. Studio instructors looking to improve their teaching will undoubtedly find inspiration in this literature.
A broad understanding of education theory is essential for assessing the value and potential of studio pedagogy. Studio courses, for example, are sometimes discussed as the best setting for teaching planning as a creative act. Pedagogical theory helps us to understand that studio is not the only pedagogical approach that effectively teaches creativity; lectures, seminars, and thesis courses all have important creative dimensions, including some that studio-based learning cannot replicate. A term paper prepared by a student in a seminar course can be creative in its analysis, and is often synthetic in similar ways to that claimed in studio pedagogy. The master’s thesis also captures some of the iterative quality so highly prized in studio courses. Moreover, lecture courses are highly effective in delivering the domain knowledge essential to creativity, whereas knowledge transfer in the studio setting can be very inefficient. Viewed in this manner, reinvigorating the dialogues in planning education about the role of planning studio will require more elaboration of its underlying theory, as well as that of the other traditional learning approaches used in planning programs.
Thus there remains much to do if we are to reinvigorate a dialogue among planning educators about the potential of studio. A number of my propositions bear further exploration. First, is our preoccupation with teaching practice in the studio setting subverting our thinking about other kinds of learning that could be engaged therein? (As a corollary, might we also explore ways to teach practice that are not studio based?) Second, what does it mean to engage our students as learners? For example, should we reframe our conceptions of student learning to foment more student-led discovery or to facilitate genuine student-generated assessment of learning outcomes? Third, how do we ground the professional socialization that is present in most planning studios, to allow students to critique the standards and ethics of planning as a community of practice? Other questions include the coproduction of new knowledge and the exploration of new modes of practice. Since these propositions are fundamentally informed by a better understanding of education theory, we planning educators might strive to engage its teachings more actively.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
My thanks to terrific colleagues who continue to shape and inspire my thinking about studio pedagogy: Alan Altshuler, David Amborski, Margaret Crawford, Susan Fainstein, David Gordon, Gary Hack, Elisabeth Hamin, Charlie Hoch, Aseem Inam, Jerold Kayden, Ron Keeble, Alex Krieger, Michael Kusner, Nina-Marie Lister, Rahul Mehrotra, Vinit Mukhija, Jeremy Németh, Peter Rowe, Brent Ryan, and Bish Sanyal. I am also very grateful to several colleagues who shared their studio experiences with me during recent ACSP sessions, as well as in telephone interviews and email exchanges. Finally, thanks to Michael Brooks, Weiping Wu, and three anonymous reviewers, for wise commentary at critical stages and kind encouragement throughout.
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