Preschool teachers’/principals’ feelings matter: their metaphoric perceptions on academicians

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on preschool teachers’/principals’ perceptions on ‘academicians’ via the metaphors they produced. ‘Academic Metaphor Form’ is applied to 65 preschool teachers/principals (64 female and 1 male) during the spring term of 2018. The research was designed as a phenomenological study, a qualitative research method. To analyze the data, content analysis technique is used. This study revealed that participants see academicians far from constructivist and student-centered approach. The distribution of the metaphors considering their positive and negative production is discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Metaphor
• academician
• preschool education
• preschool teacher
• preschool principal

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my colleagues Dr. Ceyhun Ersan, Dr. Ahmet Şahin and my dear friend Dr. Mine Çeliköz for their support during the expert opinion process. Many thanks also to the district director of national education Mr. Hüseyin ER for making it easy to reach the participants and to preschool teachers and principals participating in the research. Thanks to my American sister Mia Baki for taking care of the proofreading.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.