Architectural education-studio based learning

In A handbook for Teaching & Learning in Higher Education, Philip Martin proposes two key principles: 1. The learner as active subject and 2. Arts, humanities and social sciences are disciplinary fields, which are heavily value-laden. He stresses the point that: Academic subject areas in the area are cored through and through with ethical issues, social concerns, judgment, and the recognition of human agency. Further In these classrooms the validity of personal opinion, subjectivity, individual experience and creative skepticism mix with judgments about right and wrong, truth and untruth, order and chaos. Our task as teachers is to ensure that such judgments as emerge are best provided for by being well informed, and that this threshold of information is also served by a schooling in argument, the careful presentation and interpretation of evidence, and the identification of the valuable questions that need to be asked [1] We set out to develop technically proficient, aesthetically sensitive, socially responsible design professionals equipped to create architecture and environments for a changing, global society. We come from a position that includes cognitive and constructivist principles. There is a need for a rigorous teaching methodology, in order to educate the learner designer in the myriad of skills required and develop the appropriate mental attributes to encourage creative thinking. We use a form of Problem Based Learning that has been referred to as guided design.