A New Method for Selecting Students to Improve Quality of Architectural Education

This article has conducted to examine different methods of selecting students in order to improve the quality of learning in Architecture. The main question is to identify a series of appropriate criteria to examine and select qualified applicants for entering into the schools of Architecture. This article tries to find a practical way for selecting students to study architecture. The nature of the field of Architecture has encouraged the educational administrators in Iran to classify it under the discipline of arts in their categorization of higher educational programs. Therefore, it appears to be most appropriate to require the mass population of the applicants to go through some specific examinations, in order to enter into the schools of architecture. But the students for this field are chosen from high school graduates have mathematics and physics diploma. Students’ selection criteria are the sciences that have learned through the high school lessons in the current way. The contradiction between these criteria and the artistic nature of architecture can’t provide prerequisites to study architecture. So, the best students that have enough prerequisites can’t enter to university. Since 1993 the special exam has omitted and it caused many problems in educating architecture, so universities’ programmers provided some prerequisites courses in the first semester to compensate these problems. We can’t find many researches on the subject students’ selection criteria in architecture. Izadi (2002) and Mahmoodi (2001) studied this subject, but they didn’t pay attention to prerequisite courses and the influence of don’t preparing these on the quality of education. The influences of current method of students’ selection on the quality of architectural education rarely have been the subject of researches. This article at first reviews the problems that guide the planners to omit the special exam. Then the educational program of architecture and prerequisites are scrutinized, and it shows that the prerequisites courses can’t compensate the problems. On the second part of this article, traditional and modern point of views about the method of selection is inspected, and a systematic educational approach is selected as the theoretical framework. The highly regarded proposal of the “Institutional Learning Theory” introduced by Bloom was selected as the educational model within a “Systematic Educational” approach in this research. This theory emphasis on three parts: cognitive entry behaviors, educational system, and the efficiency of education. This research through a case study shows traditional point of view about the method of selection has caused many problems for architectural education. By using the case study method in research, performance of the entrant students has been examined within some specific courses during the first two years of their education in architecture. It shows that there isn’t any relation between students’ selection criteria and their ability or ingenuity in studying architecture. By using the systemic approach and studying different kinds of learning theories a model is suggested to draw a new method of selecting architectural students. The model has been developed to examine the characteristics of the applicants for entering their artistic qualifications as well as their scientific knowledge