CONTINUING EDUCATION: A REVIEW OF THE SITUATION IN THE PROFESSION OF ARCHITECTURE IN INDIA

The concept of continuing education is now gaining wide acceptability. Licensing bodies or regulatory agencies in several countries impose continuing education requirements on members who hold licenses to practice within a particular profession. The intention of such requirements is to encourage professionals to expand their knowledge base and stay up-to-date on new developments. Participation in continuing education programmes, aimed at capacity building, provides opportunities for professionals to maximise their skills in emerging areas of practice. The profession of architecture can be no exception to this contention.

The last few years have ushered in an era of globalisation and the Indian economy has witnessed a flood of developmental activities. The scope of the Architectural Profession in India is widening rapidly and is spreading swiftly across ever expanding limits of time and space beyond the constraints of social, cultural and language differences. The scale of architectural projects today, demands team work and expertise from various fields. An architect to become a good professional has to be practical on one hand and well versed in all forms of knowledge on the other hand. There is now a need for Architects to think about not only of quality in services but also about improving the decision making process to bring about improvement within the organisation of their professional offices and also in services rendered. There is an urgent need for the provision of facilities to impart upgraded knowledge in order to develop capacity amongst the young professionals to improve planning operations and ultimately performance so as to rise to the challenges of the coming century.

This paper reviews the need for continuing education for architects involved in practice and academics in India in a period of rapid developments against the background of globalisation. It examines the efforts taken in the field of continuing education by the apex and other agencies in India during the last five years. The paper also suggests a roadmap in respect of what can be done and how to go about creating such facilities within in a time frame which will motivate the professionals to participate in programmes of continuing education for collaborative learning in physical and virtual environments across various platforms and countries.