Mental images of child development and preschool education students on the concept of “Child” (Kirikkale sample)
Özet
The aim of this study was to identify the mental images of Child Development and Preschool Education students on the concept of “child” through metaphors. The study group comprised 155 students attending Kirikkale University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Departments of Child Development and Preschool Education in the 2014-2015 academic year. The data of the phenomenological study were collected with qualitative research methodology. The participants were requested to complete the sentence “A child is like… because…” in order to reveal their metaphors on the concept of “child.” The students’ statements were the primary source of data for the study. The metaphors constructed by the students were compiled under the 10 conceptual categories developed by Kuyucu et al. (2013). Data analysis showed that the child development and preschool education students developed 68 and 50 metaphors, respectively. “Child as the source of joy” and “child as the source of purity and love” were the conceptual categories that contained the greatest number of metaphors developed by the preschool education students, while “child as a raw material” and “child as the foundation of society and future” were the conceptual categories that comprised the greatest number of metaphors developed by the child development students. © The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology.
