What do planners do? Define Your Discipline to drive undergraduate curriculum renewal

The debate about the nature of planning continues as the profession seeks to maintain currency in an ever changing world, where environmental, educational, societal, and technological changes are rapid and often unpredictable. In these dynamic contexts, universities are expected to ensure that planning education programs continue to produce competent professional planning graduates who can adapt their practice to cope with change. The question is: how should universities decide what planning reality to prepare students for? Is it one where planners are scarce and graduates need to be job ready or is it a reality where planners are change managers who use higher order thinking skills and systems theories to guide their practice? Or, is it a mix of these separate realities? To prevent a skewed definition of the nature of the discipline it is important that all of the stakeholders have an opportunity to freely and equally contribute in any process used to define the planning discipline. The authors used the inclusive Define Your Discipline (DYD) Stakeholder Consultation Process in a pilot study in Queensland to create a draft Graduate Capability Framework for planning degree programs. Once complete, the Framework could be used to inform not only curriculum renewal, but also professional accreditation processes.