Collaborative teaching in planning education: Benefits and issues

Bhishna Bajracharya
Shahed Khan

Abstract

Extract:

Extensive planning literature exists supporting the need for collaborative planning (Healey, 1998; Innes and Booher, 1999; Margerum 2002) to bring stakeholders together to resolve planning issues and to enhance deliberative learning. This idea of enhanced learning through collaboration in the professional context has also been extended to planning education. Collaboration in the class room or a teaching context not only seeks to increase teaching effectiveness but also to capture other benefits accruing to various participants in the collaboration. Studies on collaborative teaching/learning indicate that students gain more by ¯ collaborative learning than from traditional individual learning approaches because social interaction leads to advanced cognitive development and promotes higher academic achievement (Bosworth and Hamilton, 1994; Bruffee, 1999; Hayes, 2002).