Bridging Educational Divides? An Inclusive Approach to Teaching First Year Planners

Abstract

This contribution describes a pedagogical innovation within a core module ‘Aspects of Effective Communication’ taught at Liverpool University’s Department of Civic Design that brought first year planning undergraduates together with a charity working with adults labelled as ‘learning disabled’. The innovation is theoretically underpinned by Morrow’s (2002) principles for teaching inclusive design, which provide important moral, sustainable, professional, economic and legal arguments for teaching universal design in the classroom. It is further motivated by the positive duty to promote equality of opportunity enshrined in the Disability Discrimination Act. An emphasis is placed on the need for planning students to be alert to the consequences of a disabling and noninclusive environment and suggests ways to overcome this. The module leader and her assistant critically reflect on this co-educational experiment as a way to strengthen ‘town-gown’ relations. An argument is made for student learning to be embedded in a particular social reality as a way to support students in making the transition from school to university and to make education purposeful.