The study presents a phenomenologically based research procedure, whose intent is to examine people's school experience and the meaning they ascribe to 'school.' Participants in this investigative endeavor are instructed to sketch an 'ideal school,' present their plan in a visual-schematic manner, and provide an oral and written description of their design. Proposals are presented through a Location Task -a tool originally intended for use by architects in their routine work with clients. We discuss the rationale behind this procedure and describe the research tool and its application potential. Finally, we illustrate the data processing via the analysis of one proposal designed by a 17-year-old male student.The fundamental question -'What is a school?' -leads to further, more specific questions, such as: What is its role? How should it be organized? Which teaching methods should be used? How do these affect students? and many others. In this article, we present an innovative operational method to explore these basic concerns. For this purpose, potential participants are asked to design their 'ideal school,' present it in a visual-schematic manner, and explain their proposal orally and in writing.Following data collection, we performed a combined analysis of three types of text, with a dual objective:(1) Characterizing the participants' school experience.(2) Identifying the meanings ascribed to a school in a given school community.As this article's focus is the methodological process itself, we limit ourselves to the description and application of the research method and the logic behind it. We will present an analysis of the proposal designed by a 17-year-old male student from a democratic school (Apple and Beane 2007) in Israel to illustrate data interpretation strategies. Before embarking on a detailed description of the research methodology, we wish to clarify the theoretical basis on which the study and its rationale are based.
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