METAPHORS OF YOUNG CHILDREN ON MOTHER AND TEACHER CONCEPTS: AN EXPLANATORY STUDY

Metaphors are mental tools which enable to describe events or phenomenon through other concepts. In other words, a metaphor is to understand, sense or experience a concept according to another by using an analogy. As provided in the literature metaphors about child, school, teacher, education and democracy have been investigated in terms of different demographics. Metaphors were thought to provide insight about ones knowledge on a subject and how it constructed their understanding about that subject. Within this context, the purpose of the present study is to determine metaphorical thoughts of young children on “mother” and ‘‘teacher’’ subjects. As the sample group, 100 children will be asked their understanding about mother and teacher and answers of the children will be noted by the researchers. Children will complete the sentence “Mother/Teacher is like…, because….” and they would indicate what mother/teacher means for them and why. Qualitative (content analysis) research method will be used to analyze the current data. The metaphors which have the same conceptual theme are aimed to explore and the gender differences will also be considered. All findings will be discussed in the light of the relevant literature. Results are thought to be important for teacher education in terms of explaining different roles of teachers.