Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Approved Housing Education Program (Architecture Studio 5) Based on the Expectations of the Professional Community of Architecture GraduatesA Case Study of the Professional Community in Tabriz

According to a number of scholars, addressing curriculum planning is an indispensable method to improve the quality of education. Nowadays, the fact that university graduates lack the required competence to enter the profession points to a huge gap between university education and actual professional requirements in the market. This highlights the need to improve the quality of architectural education, the training of architects, and professional competence according to the needs of society. The main purpose of the Architecture Studio 5 is to train architects to respond to the residential needs of the people and prepare them for the profession (the main purpose of the field of architecture), and there is no consistent training method. This research aims to evaluate the curriculum for Architecture Studio 5 in terms of preparing the students for the required professional competence and tries to answer the following question: “What is the relationship between professional competence in graduates of architecture in the field of housing and the curriculum for Architecture Studio 5 offered at the Faculty of Architecture?” In the first step, this study sets out the theoretical foundations of the research using a qualitative approach and the descriptive-analytical method. Then, it investigates the factors affecting the Architecture Studio 5 curriculum structure by extracting the dimensions and components that form the curriculum. Since the purpose of this study is to identify the factors affecting curriculum structure, the next step involves data collection, library resources and qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews with professional architects set up by the authors. The factors affecting training and curriculum structure are extracted by analyzing the contents of interviews in a field survey. The statistical population of specialized architects participating in the interview includes CEOs of architectural consulting companies active in the field of housing design and specialists at East Azerbaijan Province’s Construction Engineering Organization selected with purposive, maximum variation sampling. The number of interview participants is determined through theoretical saturation. The results of the present study – concerning the categorization of interview contents, the extraction of sub-categories, and comparing them with the curriculum for Architecture Studio 5 – show that there are differences between curriculum expectations from students and indices of career competence. These differences can be identified in three areas: knowledge, attitude, and skill. The results of the interview point to gaps between curriculum expectations and indices of career competence, which are relatively wider in the knowledge and attitude dimensions compared to the skill dimension such as the fact that the main curriculum component is completely overlooked. Furthermore, there are significant gaps between curriculum expectations and indices of career competence in the knowledge and attitude dimensions in terms of rules and regulations as well as in terms of sociology and audience analysis. In conclusion, despite the importance of technical and structural issues from a labor market perspective, indices of career competence in architectural education are not limited to this subject. Therefore, it is necessary to address broader issues and apply more fundamental changes to the curriculum.