Critical thinking: a base for Urban sustainable development

Abstract

This study addresses the problem of facilitating critical thinking about the real-world complexities that underlie the Sustainable Development (SD) concept among university students of architecture. The Socratic Seminar was adopted because of its characteristic exploratory questions that are closely aligned to the question-types used by the lecturer in previous years during student-requested one-to-one tutorial sessions aimed at clarifying SD concepts. The findings of this study indicate that the interactive learning session fostered a collaborative community of critical thinkers as well as a mind-shift in students’ preconceived idea of SD, suggesting that transformative learning had occurred. Furthermore, the Socratic Seminar facilitated observation of whether students in a group setting could critically apply previously acquired theoretical knowledge to assessing SD in the context provided by the multimedia material viewed. The Socratic Seminar was shown to be a useful educational tool for specifically eliciting the complexities of SD among architecture and urban planning students, thereby building on the pedagogy applied in one-to-one student-driven initiatives.