Investigation of Preschool Preservice Teachers' Perceptions of Scientific Knowledge through Metaphor

Year 2020, Volume: 8 Issue: 16, 608 - 630, 20.10.2020

Mehmet Bars Sedef Süer

https://doi.org/10.18009/jcer.743743

Abstract

Scientific knowledge is a kind of objective knowledge which is a systematic, valid, consistent, triable and provable. From this point of view, the metaphoric perceptions of pre-service teachers, who engaged in many scientific knowledge and processes during the teachers’ training process, were found worthy of investigation in this study. Study was designed on the basis of the phenomenology study design. 170 pre-service teachers enrolled in the preschool education department of one of the public university in the 2019-2020 academic year participated voluntarily in the study. The questionnaire form prepared by the researchers was used to find out current metaphorical perceptions of preservice teachers about the concept of “scientific knowledge”. In this study, a total of 139 metaphors related to scientific knowledge were created. Metaphors created by 170 preservice teachers participating in the study were categorized based on their commonalities and divided into nine categories.

Keywords

Scientific Knowledge, Preschool, Prospective Teachers, Metaphoric Analysis

Investigation of Preschool Preservice Teachers' Perceptions of Scientific Knowledge through Metaphor

Abstract

Scientific knowledge is a kind of objective knowledge, which is systematic, valid, consistent, triable and provable. From this point of view, the metaphoric perceptions of preservice teachers, who engaged in many scientific knowledge and processes during the teachers’ training process, were found worthy of investigation in this study. This study adopted the phenomenology study design. The sample consisted of 170 preservice teachers studying in preschool education in a state university during the 2019–2020 academic year. The questionnaire form prepared by the researchers was used to find out the current metaphorical perceptions of preservice teachers about the concept of ‘scientific knowledge’. In this study, a total of 139 metaphors related to scientific knowledge were created. Metaphors created by 170 preservice teachers participating in the study were categorised based on their commonalities and divided into nine categories.

Keywords

Scientific knowledge,, preschool, preservice teachers metaphoric analysis

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