Toward Grounded Planning: Possibilities for Bridging Theory and Practice through Grounded Learning

Abstract

Spatial planning, as a profession and a discipline, has been historically rooted in its problembased approach to improving the welfare of society. The problem-based approach is underpinned not only by planning theories that focus on planning procedures and institutional designs, but also a variety of substantive theories and analytical methods (Faludi, 1973). The latter varies depending on the place, time, and case. Furthermore, planning issues are often cross-disciplinary, and planning concepts evolve constantly. The nature of the planning profession thus poses a tough challenge for planning educators in preparing future planners to help achieve social, ecological, and economic sustainability with sufficient knowledge, skills, and strong self-learning ability. To bridge education and practice, engaging students in real problems and projects has been broadly recognized as a critical part of the curriculum design of a planning school. But this recognition also raises a pedagogical question: To what extent and through which theories and methods can planning educators lead their students to interact with real problems and achieve successful learning? ‘Grounded planning’, the title of the theme issue, expresses a wish to bring new ways of thinking with a focus on preparing future planners to tackle a variety of site-specific and cross-disciplinary challenges through grounded learning in planning education. The term ‘grounded’ is borrowed from grounded theory, one of the best-known qualitative research methods first described by Glaser and Strauss (1967) half a century ago. Grounded theory was designed to create theories that were empirically derived from real-world situations (Oktay, 2012). Grounded theory methods are iterative, reflexive, and inductive; they seek to represent concrete situations and produce abstract theories of real-world complexity (Hammersley, 1992; Bailey et al., 1999). More importantly, grounded theory’s purpose is to build theories with data from the social world, such that the theories are ‘grounded’ in people’s everyday experiences and actions. People’s actions, including those of planners, are influenced by broader historical, geographical, and structural contexts, which makes grounded theory a useful tool for incorporating both human agency and social structures (Knigge & Cope, 2006). Grounded planning, therefore, is a co-construction of theory and practice between academics and practitioners to remedy the perceived gap. It uses theory to develop new models of practice and integrates the insights from practice to improve theory. A core value of grounded theory is the collaboration that bridges the researchers and the practitioners (Oktay, 2012). Therefore, the term ‘grounded’ carries multiple connotations in planning education; it is situated in connecting theory and practice, understanding the real world and specific local contexts, and more importantly, envisioning a collaborative venture between academics and practitioners. Grounded learning, which shares grounded theory’s inductive, constructivist approach, is an inductive learning process in which the learner is interactively involved with the phenomenon being studied (Schwarz, 1985; Mosca & Howard, 1997; Corner et al., 2006; Smith et al., PLANNING PRACTICE & RESEARCH 2022, VOL. 37, NO. 4, 407–411 https://doi.org/10.1080/02697459.2022.2074113