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Stepping into the 'real world': architecture students' preparedness for professional practice.

Article Excerpt
Literature indicated the need to include a variety of skills in architecture pedagogy to better enable students to establish their footing in professional practice. This study attempted to understand perceptions of fourth year architecture students at two programs regarding their preparation for professional practice. Observations in design studios, interviews with faculty teaching the studio, and focus group interviews with selected students provided data for this study. Five concerns associated with professional practice emerged: (1) Budgetary concerns, (2) Understanding the Design Firm Dynamics, (3) Communicating in the Field, (4) Technical and Legal concerns, and (5) Precedent Studies. These are discussed and implications derived for architecture education which may also be relevant to the pedagogical structure for other fields in higher education

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A fourth year architecture student on the first day of my internship, I faced my first reality check. My boss walked me to my station saying, "Forget everything they taught you in school. Let's start over." At that point I was nurturing dreams of getting my architecture degree, stepping into a perfect world of architecture, creating master-pieces and watching them materialize all over the town and country. The internship was an eye-opener, not shattering, but reshaping the dreams. Architecture offices are often concerned about the curricula in schools that focus on creativity more than practical issues like budgets and construction management. This study resulted from a personal need to understand other students' perceptions of their preparedness for the entry and eventual absorption into professional practice. The need to identify these perspectives was further reinforced by literature as the research progressed.

This paper presents opinions from students at two architecture programs about their preparation for professional practice. Student opinions provided important insights and the paper suggests strategies for architecture pedagogy, which may also be relevant to other higher education fields, to provide students with a realistic perspective of what they may expect upon graduation.

Background Literature

Akin (2002) argued that in order for professional education to succeed, there should be substantial representation of applications and actions in professional practice in the core of educational experience. Literature in architecture provides extensive references to the need for incorporating skills in architecture education to better prepare students for professional practice. Most importantly, scholars stress upon the differences between perceptions of architects versus that of their clients.

Kaupinnen (1989) stated that architects' thought process and their perception of buildings can be very different from and may even conflict with the way the public views it. Deasy (1974) elaborated this concept and discussed the difference between the designers' orderly and systematic world against the human world which is constantly changing and influenced by chance. There is a difference between the visualization abilities of designers and their clients. Architects need to develop interpersonal skills in relationship to clients and other professionals, but also become better at listening and responding to, and communicating with building users and the public (Nicol & Pilling, 2000). Tsow and Beamer (1985) stated that the major tool of architects is graphic skills which the client is not fluent in reading and assimilating. They argued that it is essential for architecture students to learn to verbalize and write architecture and the thought process during design. Students need to acquire abilities to communicate their ideas to clients and understand their requirements. Akin (2002) argued that professional education requires substantial representation of applications and actions in professional practice in the core of educational experience. One strategy for providing insights into professional practice is the incorporation of case-based instruction in architecture.

Case-based Instruction in Architecture

Ertmer and Russell (1995) defined case-based instruction as a teaching method which encourages active participation by students in real or hypothetical problem situations, followed by reflection and discussion on the experiences encountered in the field under study. Akin (2002) defined this method as "the dissemination and acquisition of requisite knowledge in a domain principally through the systematic examination of cases encoded in a case base" (p. 415).

Several studies indicated a wide gap in the attitudes and understanding of students and professionals in architecture. Verma (1997) studied students with different amounts of professional experience and concluded that students with professional experience, irrespective of whether the experience was in architecture, indicated a better understanding of design theory. Professional experience plays a major role in the development of design philosophy, concepts, and eventually the design of spaces or structures.

Rambow and Bromme (1995) analyzed the responses of architects (professionals) in relation to those of students (novices) to designs in three separate situations. Professionals indicated more negative features in the designs than students. Students requested more information about clients in order to effectively analyze the designs. The researchers attributed these differences to personal preferences and views formulated by professionals with years of experience. Heylighen & Vertijnen (2003) emphasized the importance of studying cases to acquaint students with the kind of database that architects acquire during years of professional practice. They argued that students do not have the extensive record of cases that professional architects acquire through experience.

Case-based instruction has been studied as an alternate to professional experience and researchers assessed the feasibility of incorporating it in architecture schools (Ashbaugh & Kasten, 1991; Ertmer & Russell, 1995). There are two components of case-based instruction; case study emphasizes the object being studied and case method signifies the process of studying a problem situation (Kowalski, 1991). Akin (2002) mentioned that in architecture education, the precedents that are studied as cases are specific designs or buildings that students can use to support their designs. Often the precedents are past solutions to specific problems in design and may be negative or positive. Akin elaborated that students are asked to research and collect relevant information about the...

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