Analysis of Teacher Candidates Perception’s of Turkish National Education System through Metaphors

Abstract

Pre-service teachers perceptions of Turkish Education System with which they will be charged is of vital importance, since it may affect their viewpoints on the profession, level of motivation and professional practice. This study aims to reveal pre-service teachers perceptions of Turkish Education System in which they are going to take part, through metaphors. Sample group of the study is consisted of 192 students from both formal and evening education took the course of “Turkish Education System and School Management” in the departments of Primary Education with Mathematics, Social Sciences, Computer Sciences and Instructional Technologies of Fatih Faculty of Education in Karadeniz Technical University. Demographic information of the pre-service teachers were examined with a semi-structured form and in order to gather the data each student were asked to fill in the blanks of the following sentence: “Turkish Education System is like …; because … ”. The metaphors that pre-service teachers used in order to express their perceptions of Turkish Education System and the cognitive categories in which these metaphors can be distinguished are examined on the basis of the data gathered. Qualitative analysis techniques were implemented in the analysis of data of the study. It is observed in this study that pre-service teachers created 125 metaphors and these metaphors can be gathered into 7 categories. According to the findings of the study, metaphors can be used as a strong searching device to find out, understand and clarify teacher candidate’s personal perceptions of the concept of “Turkish Education System”.