Learning architecture to become agents of social change. A critical look at innovative teaching in schools of architecture in Ecuador

Learning architecture in Ecuador aims to respond to its complex socio-spatial reality. While architecture schools perpetuate conventional ways of university teaching, innovative practices are experimented in classrooms and other learning spaces that rethink the objectives of learning, profiling new professionals to respond to the urgent needs for social transformation. The inclusion of socio-environmental responsibility criteria in learning practices seeks to redefine graduation profiles towards critical people, active students and committed professionals. Methodologically, the analysis of some teaching-learning practices published in academic journals and cataloged with theoretical-pedagogical criteria allows the identification of emerging themes and procedures in architectural learning whose verification through surveys and the study of some exercise statements outlines new teaching-learning processes of architecture to reposition the profession as a service to society and the project as an instrument to improve people’s lives.