Making GIS Instruction Relevant to Planners

P lanning's " quiet revolution " in information technology (Godschalk and McMahon, 1992) may have finally come of age. Through the decade of the 1990s, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has evolved from a technological novelty distinguished by its operational complexities into a much easier to use, less expensive, and now seemingly indispensible tool of the planning profession. GIS skills that were once the special province of a select few are now an almost essential requirement for both current and prospective planning professionals. The evolution of the technology and this change in its revolutionary profile provide an opportunity for the reassessment of both the motivations and the methods of GIS instruction within planning programs. As the complexities of GIS technology continue to diminish, important substantive learning objectives that were once buried under the technology finally stand a chance of becoming the focal point of the instructional process , pushing GIS instruction beyond simple explanations of how toward a deeper understanding of why. This article explores the issues associated with reconstituting the nature and content of GIS instruction into a form matched to the pedagogical goal of planning education: helping students develop into informed, sophisticated planning professionals, savvy in the application and limitations of GIS as a tool of their profession. Whereas Drummond (1995) suggested that the crucial question for planning education is " how to integrate GIS technology into the traditional substantive areas of the (nonmethods) planning curriculum " (p. 280), I suggest that we can also do much more to integrate the substance of planning into the existing modes of GIS instruction. The account that I present draws on my own experiences in attempting to reshape the instructional emphasis of my teaching into a more " planning-relevant " form, discussing the issues and opportunities that I have encountered along the way. The article is presented in three parts. First, I survey the broad terrain of GIS pedagogy to reveal the form and nature of the prevailing modes of GIS instruction. GIS educators are fortunate in that the pedagogy of GIS is not only a subject of much interest across many disciplines but is also an apparent concern of the vendors that produce GIS software. As a result, educators have a wide array of instruction-related materials Abstract This article explores the pedagogical issues associated with reconstructing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) instruction into a form more directly linked to the substantive heart …