Planning Education and Inter-cultural Collaboration: Awareness, Innovation, Reflection and Preparation for Practice

Inter-cultural awareness and the capacity for cross-cultural collaboration is a fundamental contemporary element of planning practice, and increasingly of a planning career. The development among planning students of cultural awareness and reflection on practice is crucial to their future roles as planning practitioners in multi-cultural communities and in a globalised body of research and practice. Moreover, students are aware of the increasing global flows of contemporary careers, with students seeking work in international settings. Developing inter-cultural awareness and capacity for reflective practice is, however, challenging at a personal, professional and educational level. This paper describes and reflects on a series of innovative collaborative fieldwork and studio visits of planning students on exchange between La Trobe University Australia and the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka over the last three years. It will utilise reflective assessment and observation centred on these visits to explore the way in which students from both countries enter the process of inter-cultural learning and the way in which such transformative experience effects perceptions of planning practice among those entering the profession. Key findings relate to the development of a global mindset and the varied success in the navigation of inter-cultural challenges as a developing professional.