Calling On, Out, and In: Toward a Critical Pedagogy for Participatory Planning

We reflect on the current state of participatory planning pedagogy and observe that neither teaching participation as a set of techniques nor as a critical philosophy of inclusion adequately prepares planners to attend to the inherent context-specificity, questions of equity and justice, and profound epistemological differences in engagement settings. We propose that planning educators recognize classrooms as contexts for dynamic, participatory engagement and use this setting to model and teach an integrated set of practices for calling out, calling on, and calling in to respond to the emerging demands for our profession’s active role in democratic decision-making.