STALLED PEDAGOGIES: Launching Renewal in Undergraduate Sustainable Building-Design (SB-D) Pedagogy through Multi-protagonist Insight

Abstract

         Alternative trajectories for Sustainable Building-Design (SB-D) instruction are shaped through multi-protagonist insight. SB-D stakeholders at the School of Architecture & Design (SoA+D), Bangkok, Thailand, become “protagonists” in opening future pedagogical trajectories that point towards the next iteration of SB-D instruction.

         Data are collected from students, teachers, industry-experts and future employers via four types of research methodology; 1) Questionnaires (using structured and partiallystructured questions); 2) Interviews (in-depth, one-to-one, conducted with open and partiallystructured questions); 3) Delphi Panel process through 5-point Lickert questionnaire and; 4) Roundtable event (with participant feedback & post-event interviews).

         Grounded theory is next used to interpret all questionnaire and interview data from which twelve possible trajectories for future SB-D instruction emerge. A Delphi panel of experts ‘rank’ all trajectories in order of their viability for future use and the results are presented-back to all stakeholders via a Roundtable Event.

         The roundtable debates the proposed directions for future instruction. Their collective insight aspires to a trajectory that uncouples SB-D instruction from its typical “lesson-plan” delivery and guides it toward the idea of “possibility planning”. In such a scenario, possibility planning allows a greater freedom to compose the teaching and learning experience and provides the conditions for more intriguing instructional ideas to emerge. In this way, protagonists take orthodox instruction and re-animate it as a wholly more compelling and promiscuous vehicle with which to encounter SB-D.