Teaching Practice

Abstract

Planning is a way of acting. People learn to plan by practicing planning. Yet university planning programs give predominant attention to classroom activity. A cultural division between "academic" and "practice" faculty and classes gives higher status and greater influence to academic courses emphasizing research and analysis. Thus university programs tacitly teach that planning is the same as research. Despite rhetoric about "integrating academics and practice," programs give little attention to that challenge. Reforming planning education to teach students to plan requires a change in the culture of planning programs that dissolves differences between "academic" and "practice" to focus on questions of practice.