Incorporating Place-based Education in Teaching Urbanism

Abstract

It is assumed that a pedagogy without a proper acknowledgement of place may detach teaching and learning from context specific knowledge asset. This paper examines a pedagogy that involves Place-based Education (PBE) in teaching urbanism with a view to enhancing critical thinking aspect. The pedagogy is applied under common core curriculum in line with Hong Kong’s 3-3-4 curricular reform. Students come from different disciplines who maintain various intellectual inclinations. The pedagogy chooses an angle of sustainable urban development which aims to explore how Hong Kong responses and reactions to a number of global issues related to sustainable urban living. Teaching and learning activities consist of lectures, group projects, video-screening and tutorials. In particular a field exercise is incorporated with a view to bringing students to real urban scenarios. By reviewing students’ submissions after the field work and the feedbacks from the course evaluation, the pedagogy is benchmarked against the learning outcomes. The field trip as one pragmatic teaching and learning process accentuates physical engagement by students and collective ownership of place-based knowledge. Students’ submissions demonstrate PBE is an effective way to mobilize enquiries of community, leading to a better recognition of the continuity and commonality of human experience across time and space. Also students are able to articulate site visit with knowledge obtained from lectures and tutorials, demonstrating the ability to synthesize different source of knowledge for reasoned positions. The findings indicate although a full-fledged criticalness requires more bilateral endeavors, incorporating PBE in teaching urbanism is an effective teaching practice whereby students are apt to maintain enduring pursuit of knowledge and develop critical intellectual enquiry of issues related to urbanism.