Pedagogy of Practice

Professional Practice curriculum plays an essential role in addressing conflict in the practice of architecture. The course introduces students to the comprehensive field of practice, existing within a broad range of social, organizational, economic and professional contexts. An opportunity was envisioned to merge the real-world challenges of community design project with the Professional Practice course at the School of Architecture at Montana State. This paper presents a unique approach for the Professional Practice curriculum, which effectively integrated “productive conflict” from three community design projects. The pedagogical approach at Montana State provided students an educational opportunity to engage with an iterative community design / architectural practice model, where real-time information and context feedback were embedded into core learning objectives.