An Investigation of Prospective Teachers’ Views Regarding Teacher Identity via Metaphors
Abstract
Problem Statement: Teacher identity
refers to the construct of the professional personality that is formed during
career advancement. The teaching identity has cognitive, social and
professional elements. By using metaphors enable analysis in an organizational
sense and open up a new perspective that can clarify a complex event. When
teachers` and prospective teacher candidates` professional identities is
analyzed, it is noteable that how often metaphors are employed. With this perspective,
to investigate teachers’ or prospective teachers’ views about their teaching
identities metaphore is very suitable tool. For these reasons, a metaphor study
can be an appropriate tool to investigate teachers’ or prospective teachers’
views about their teaching identities. Moreover, raising awareness about teacher identity may
help improve teacher training programs.
Purpose of the
Study: The purpose of
this study was to analyze the views of prospective teacher candidates, all
students in the Department of Turkish Language, regarding their professional
identities via metaphor analysis.
Method: This paper
discusses a phenomenological study used to determine how prospective Turkish
language teachers construct the meaning of being a Turkish language teacher
through their use of metaphors. The participants in this study comprised 123 prospective
teachers who had studied in the Faculty of Education at a state university on
Turkey’s southern coast. Among the participating prospective teachers, 55% were
female (n=68) and 45% were male (n=55); 26% (n=32) were first-year students,
24% (n=30) were second-year students, 28% (n=34) were third-year students, and
22% (n=27) were fourth-year students. A total of 123 participants were asked to
complete the expression a Turkish language teacher is like …… because ……… by
using metaphors. The metaphors produced by the participants were analyzed using
the five stages Which are “coding and elimination stage”, “sample metaphor
compilation stage”, “sorting and categorization stage”, “establishing the
inter-rater reliability rate” and “analyzing data quantitatively”. The data
were analyzed by a chi-square test to detect dominant groups.
Findings and
Results: As a result of the research, prospective teachers were found to develop
41 valid metaphors, which were then thematically coded into six main
categories. It is concluded that the participating prospective Turkish language
teachers generally regard the profession as a source of information and their
metaphors did not differ across academic class levels.
Conclusion and
Recommendations: In sum, based on
the results that more than half of the prospective teachers defined a teacher
according to traditional roles. The most important traditional role was
presenting information to the student. The results illustrate that pre-license
experiences, teacher training and professional experiences affect the formation
of a teacher’s identity. In this paper, candidates’ values, beliefs, and so on
are not included. Another study could be conducted to evaluate metaphors based
on those points.
Keywords
Kaynakça
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- Cerit, Y. (2008). Ogretmen kavrami ile ilgili metaforlara iliskin ogrenci, ogretmen ve yoneticilerin gorusleri [Students, teachers and administrators’ views on metaphors with respect to the concept of teacher]. Turk Egitim Bilimleri Dergisi, 6(4), 693-712.
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Ayrıntılar
Birincil Dil
İngilizce
Konular
-
Bölüm
Araştırma Makalesi
Yazarlar
Yayımlanma Tarihi
15 Ekim 2016
Gönderilme Tarihi
15 Ekim 2016
Kabul Tarihi
-
Yayımlandığı Sayı
Yıl 2016 Cilt: 16 Sayı: 65