Development and Innovation in Curriculum Design in Landscape Planning: Students as Agents of Change

Landscape educators are being asked to address the needs and aspirations of a wide diversity of students in increasing class sizes in Australian universities. A method to identify the philosophical positions of landscape architecture students in landscape planning may offer educators some insight into alternative learning experiences appropriate for different types of students in large classes. We draw on the rhetorical approach of Kenneth Burke to describe the pedagogic discourses of students’ drawings in landscape planning as a way of exploring the dominant perspectives within a class. This work forms part of a doctoral study undertaken to document practices and orientations of students in relation to landscape planning prior to their transition into the workplace. Visual representations of ‘landscape planning’ in drawings and text formed the basis of a typology of five philosophical positions used in identifying how this subject should be considered by the reader. The findings suggest that many students took two dominant philosophical positions when confronted with the complex work of landscape planning. Some students shifted their position during the semester and it is argued that emerging practitioners may hold a range of positions in relation to landscape planning over a period of time.