Educating collaborative planners: the learning potential of multi-actor regional learning environments for planning education

Recent changes in planning context, object, subject and approaches characterised by the key words wickedness, collaborative processes and boundary crossing, require a reconsideration of competencies needed for professional planners and evidence for the effectiveness of learning environments in which student planners can practice these competencies. This study explores if five “regional learning environments” (RLEs) contribute to students competence development and if working in multidisciplinary groups and with multiple external actors has an added value for this learning. Results show a differing pattern of competence development across RLEs. Multidisciplinary RLEs more strongly foster students’ competence development. Quantitative data show less effect of multi-actor collaboration while qualitative data show a wide range of potential learning outcomes typically related to multidisciplinary group work or multi-actor collaboration. It is concluded that the learning potential of RLEs is not optimally utilised yet and that process coaching is an important precondition for increasing students’ learning.