Cultural Consciousness in Heritage Architecture Education With a Problem-Based Learning Approach

Abstract

Heritage architecture education is important to develop contextual understanding and cultural consciousness among architecture students. Conventional teaching approaches are inadequate to cultivate students' cultural knowledge of specific places and community contexts. This chapter addresses this gap by evaluating how problem-based learning (PBL) as a teaching approach in a measured drawing module contributes to cultural consciousness among architecture students. It adopts quantitative survey research design to evaluate students' cultural consciousness based on knowledge of place identity, understanding of community social contexts, and recognition of community cultural contexts. Two student cohorts completing the module participated as respondents, providing insights into PBL's impact. The findings substantiate the adoption of PBL as an effective pedagogy to enhance students' cultural consciousness, by developing contextual and cultural sensitivity in design cognition. It is also useful in guiding the design of teaching approaches for culturally related subjects in other disciplines.