Users’ participation in designing process is needed to plan a social sustainable school. Despite the new wave that has arisen in the context of participatory design, users’ participation is probably disappointing in Iran. In this study, for designing an educational complex, the” ROLE”( Relating Objectives for Learning to Education) method is applied to a group of teachers as main participants. Workshop sessions were held by means of teachers’ participation in selecting a planning organization layout and more specific physical settings. Interestingly the results was quiet different with the typical present schools in Iran, and this is of great importance. Findings suggest that, enclosed yard is teachers’ most favourable organization. Other extracted results identify teachers’ preferred physical settings, separately in elementary school and high school. Selected spaces, mostly include setting which is not common in Iranian schools, as high quality outdoor spaces, spaces for providing students more interaction and spaces which let more experimental projects.
Keywords: School Design; Participatory Design; Iran; Teachers; ROLE
