A Metaphoric Case : Thoughts of Pre-Service Turkish Teachers Related to Literary Qualified Children ’ s Books

The world has been changing, information sources have been diversifying; and the importance of reading book has been gradually increasing. Books’ constituting a place in life children as vitally important in developing their learning and imagination depends upon their close surrounding and essentially their learning Turkish. Therefore, in this study, the perceptions of pre-service Turkish teachers related to literary qualified children’s books were tried to be determined. The study was a phenomenological research carried out benefiting from the qualitative research tradition. The sample of the study that was carried out in a state university in Anatolia included 27 students chosen through maximum variation sampling among the students studying at Turkish Teaching department of the relevant state university. Data of the research were collected through open ended written interview form and semi-structured interview form; and the obtained data were coded and categorized performing content analysis. At the end of the study, it was revealed that pre-service Turkish teachers emphasized educative dimension of literary qualified children’s books as well as their content properties through the metaphors they used and relatively kept the properties such as language and narration in the background.


Introduction
The world has been changing, information sources have been diversifying; and the importance of reading book has been gradually increasing.Books' constituting a place in life children as vitally important in developing their learning and imagination depends upon their close surrounding and essentially their learning Turkish.Considerations of Turkish teachers related to books in general and children's book special meaning, their discourses on books and thoughts related to books will strengthen or weaken the attachment of children with books.However, it was noticed when the relevant literature was reviewed that the studies revealing the thoughts of Turkish teachers or pre-service Turkish teachers related to literary qualified children's books were limited.In fact, general ideas of pre-service Turkish teachers on children's books are essential in order to create an attachment between children and books and to raise mentally and emotionally healthier individuals.Therefore, perceptions of pre-service Turkish teachers related to literary qualified children's books were tried to be determined in this study.
Children's book that can be defined as written products that are prepared for children, contributing upon language, thought, emotion and imagination development of children and spending good time was considered as an instrument that provides opportunity for children to have awareness on different branches of fine arts, and create first love towards their native language, and as an effort to raise individuals of future by Sever (2000).Children's books that contribute upon children and their development have numerous benefits such as developing imagination, comprehension skill, analysis and synthesis power, vocabulary, general culture, thinking diversity, sympathy establishment, problem solving, and expressing themselves (Serafini & Moses, 2014;Kılıç, 2006;Şimşek, 2007;Sınar-Çılgın, 2007).Obtaining these benefits at a maximum level is possible through children's books having specific qualities.In the relevant literature, beside the researchers that classified the qualities children's books should include under general style and content titles (Şimşek, 2007;Ciravoğlu, 2000;Kıbrıs, 2006;Oğuzkan, 2010;Gürel, Temizyürek, & Şahbaz 2007), there were also researchers that added language and narration properties to the current classification as a different title as being different from this classification (Sınar-Çılgın, 2007;Nas, 2004).
In the light of this classification, the first of important qualities children's books have to have could be mentioned to be style, in other words outer structure (Anderson, 1985).The factors such as size, type of paper, page layout, printing technique, letters, pictures, cover and cover layout that could be evaluated within the outer structure properties should reflect a design approach that will encourage children to reading as a whole as mentioned by Yazıcı-Okuyan (2009).So much so that, children should understand the importance and respect given to an instrument produced for themselves from the elaborative design that is integrated with outer structure (stylistic) properties of the books.
Another criterion that should be regarded in a literary qualified children's book include the aspects related to content properties.As mentioned by Tekin, "The aspect that should probably be regarded most in children's books is content (2000)."Content properties that will directly affect the temper of children and shape the criteria in perceiving the dream and truth include the factors such as theme, subject, heroes, plot and plan.If these factors are related to interest, expectations and curiosity of children, children will read the book fondly; otherwise will stop reading (Ataseven & İnandı, 2000).
The last criterion that should be regarded in children's books includes the factors related to language and narration properties.Sever who emphasized that the most important property that determine the children's books' being for children was language and narration regarded a literary qualified children's book as an instrument that introduces vocabulary presence of a language and provides children to have sensitivity (2010).On the same subject, Tekin revealed the importance of aspects such as vocabulary, sentence, figures of speech, alliteration, articulation and narration competence in children's books mentioning that "No matter how important and necessary information a book includes and an interesting subject it narrates, if you cannot find the soft and fluent use of the language, ending a book turns into torture (2000)." After mentioning the aspects related to style, content, language and narration properties in literary qualified children's books in general meaning, theme of a publishing based artistic work can be specified to be integrated with its plan, pictures, style, language, and narration (Kaplan, 2000).However, when the relevant literature was reviewed, the situations seemed slightly more different than it should be.The current literature referred that pre-service Turkish teachers did not equally regarded the factors such as style, content or language and narration necessary to be considered in qualified children's books and evaluated literary qualified children's books only focusing on one of these aforementioned factors.
For instance, in the research carried out by Yazıcı-Okuyan (2009) upon the selection criteria of Turkish and classroom teachers for the children's literature products used during the reading time, it was determined that positive views of teachers related to outer structure criteria were at a low level, and the teachers participated into the research regarded interior structure properties more.In the research, educative criteria of children's books were the ones all teachers agreed most.It was remarkable in the research that teachers wanted to see more direct messages rather than the hidden indirect messages in literary qualified children's books.Similar to the findings of Yazıcı-Okuyan, it was also noticed in researches of Arslan and Alamdar (2011) that pre-service Turkish teachers primarily regarded content properties of books while suggesting the books students should read.It was also determined that the pre-service teachers regarded language and narration of books at a decreasing level subsequently.In the research carried out by Temizkan (2011) upon the perception of pre-service Turkish teachers towards the properties children's books should include, results contrast to the aforementioned study findings were obtained.According to the research of Temizkan, whereas pre-service Turkish teachers had a level of knowledge above the average about the properties children's books should have in their outer structure, they had no adequate knowledge on content, and language and narration.Although it was carried out upon pre-service pre-school teachers, when the study of Öztürk-Samur (2011) titled as competences of pre-service pre-school teachers for selecting the children's literature products, it was noticed that findings of Temizkan were repeated.Öztürk-Samur noticed in the interviews he performed with pre-service pre-school teachers that they mostly emphasized the outer properties of books.He revealed in his research that pre-service teachers did not mention the inner structure properties of the children's books much.Despite not revealing as definite result as the researches mentioned above, significant findings were also revealed in the research of Maltepe (2009) upon the selection competence of pre-service Turkish teachers for the products of children's literature.In the research it was noticed that pre-service teachers regarded more about the children's books upon their being didactic, reflecting their imagination, having a theme attracting children and relevant to the real life, being appropriate to children's culture and being written in a fluent and understandable language.It was also noticed in the evaluation related to stylistic properties of qualified children's book in the research that pre-service teachers mentioned visual elements (especially pictures), printing properties, font size and point size more.
As could be seen in the relevant literature, pre-service teachers had different ideas related to the qualifications necessary to be included in literary qualified children's books.In the sense, the research was essential in order to determine what they thought on literary qualified children's books, to establish a relationship between books and children, to learn views of pre-service Turkish teachers related to the literary qualified children's books and provide specific guidance.For that purpose, views of pre-service Turkish teachers related to literary qualified children's books were tried to be determined through metaphors in the study.

Research Design
The study was a phenomenological research carried out benefiting from the qualitative research tradition."A phenomenological study is an inductive descriptive research design focusing on human fact (Baş & Akturan, 2013)".In a phenomenological study, individuals describe their experiences on phenomena (Creswell, 2014).Aims, behaviors and perceptions of individuals direct the phenomenological research process (Jasper, 1994).In this research, phenomenological design was used because thoughts of teachers related to the children's books were tried to be learned through metaphors.

Study Sample
The study was carried out in a state university in Anatolia.Twenty-seven students chosen randomly through maximum variation sampling method among the students studying at Turkish Teaching Department of the relevant state university were included into the sample of the study.The purpose to collect data through maximum variation sampling method in the study was "…to create a relatively small sample and to reflect variation of individuals possible to be part of a problem studied in this sample at a maximum level (Yıldırım & Şimşek, 2011)."In the relevant study, the students studying at the 3 rd grade of Turkish Teaching Department were classified into three groups including to be successful at upper, medium, and low level according to their children's literature course mid-term exam scores, and nine students from each group were chosen as the data source in order to provide this variety.

Data Collection
Before collecting the data of the study, the lecturer lecturing the children's literature course was contacted, and permission was obtained from the lecture of the course for the study to be carried out.Subsequently, contact was established with the pre-service teachers via the lecturer having the role of key information provider, and students were informed about the purpose, subject, and necessity of the study to be carried out.In order to prevent possible ethical problem, precautions to be taken were shared with the pre-service teachers, and the pre-service teachers that would provide data to the study were provided to feel free about being a part of the current scientific study.After necessary informing, pre-service teachers mentioned that they did not consider to support the study as risky and signed previously prepared consent form.
After taking the permission of pre-service teachers to be included into the study, data of the research were collected through a written form including a standardized open-ended question and a semi-structured interview performed to support this form.

Standardized Open Ended Written Interview Form
Before preparing the standardized open-ended interview form, the relevant literature was reviewed, and two question templates that will measure the perceptions of pre-service teachers towards literary qualified children's book were prepared.Secondly, these question templates were shown to totally three people including one children's literature specialist, one assessment and evaluation specialist, and one language specialist, and one of these two question templates was agreed.In order to determine to what extent this template could serve to the intended idea, a pilot implementation was performed to 10 students who were not included to the current study.As result of the pilot implementation, it was retested that the current question template had the quality that would provide data for the study.Subsequently, the data necessary for the study was collected presenting the template sentence of "Children's books resemble to … Because …" to the pre-service teachers through a sample instruction.The reason for using standardized open-ended interview form in the study was not to take much time of participants and to facilitate the data analysis (Patton, 2014).

Semi-Structured Interview Form
By the worry of pre-service teachers could experience some difficulties in expressing themselves adequately through a standardized open-ended written interview form, data of the study was also collected through semi-structured interview form.So that both some disadvantages of standardized open-ended interview form such as not entering into the world of participant was overcome (Merriam, 2013), and changes were possible to be made in content based upon the concept at times.The semi-structured interview was made with 6 pre-service teachers chosen among the pre-service teachers from whom data were obtained through standardized open-ended interview form.During the interview, the question template of "Children's books resemble to …Because …" addressed previously to the pre-service teachers was readdressed in different forms.A trust-based environment was tried to be created in order to provide pre-service teachers feel psychologically relaxed during the interview, and the interview was recorded via a voice recorder taking the permission of the pre-service teachers.

Data Analysis
Data of the study were analyzed in two ways.Firstly, the data obtained through the standardized open-ended interview form were read for a few times, and then coded by the researcher and a qualitative research specialist and subjected to the content analysis.In the content analysis, the process is to gather similar data together within the frame of specific concepts and themes, and to interpret these organizing in a way the reader can understand (Yıldırım & Şimşek, 2011).Secondly, the scheme of the data obtained from the pre-service teachers via the voice recorder was performed by the researcher, and the schemed data were subjected directly to the content analysis as in the standardized open-ended interview form.It is also necessary to mention here that data collection and data analysis processes progressed one within the other, and analysis was constant during each process of the study.

Validity and Reliability
In order to provide the study to have a scientific identity, some precautions were taken during the study process.The first of these precautions was during the coding process.So as to provide coding reliability of the study, reliability tests based upon time and observation were carried out, and the study was concluded to be reliable.Whereas time-based reliability means measuring the fact in the same way within the passing time, observation-based reliability means more than one researchers' measuring a fact or event in the same way within the same time period (Yıldırım & Şimşek, 2011).
Another precaution taken for the validity and reliability of the study was to diversify the data collection methods.The data collected through standardized open-ended interview form in the study were recollected from 6 pre-service teachers in the same group in order to provide conclusiveness, and the obtained data were used for data richness and verification.
Apart from these, the data set was revised for many times in order to increase validity and reliability of the study, a logical chain was tried to be established among the information, direct quotations were frequently used in order to remain loyal to the obtained data, and participant confirmation was asked for after writing findings and interpretations section.

Thoughts of Pre-Service Turkish Teachers Related to Style Properties of Literary Qualified Children's Books
Pre-service Turkish teachers used fairly limited number of metaphors related to stylistic properties of literary qualified children's books.Only 4 out of totally 27 pre-service teachers emphasized the stylistic properties of literary qualified children's books through metaphors.For example, 5 numbered pre-service teacher resembled children's books to non-living flowers.For the student, the reason for this situation was children's books decorating the libraries, but having no more properties apart from this.Moreover, 5 numbered student expressed his/her perception related to children's books mentioning that "Children's books have no smell like non-living flowers; however, these books are magnificent in terms of their colors and shape.Although they do not grab attention in their subjects, they are at a high point in their cover and shape," and stated that children's books were weak in terms of their content and at a high point in terms of their style.Another pre-service teacher mentioned that "They attract people through their elaborate covers.They provide the opportunity of travelling to different worlds or different places communing with the heroes in the book by means of their attractive colors of the pictures inside (S 4)" trying to grab attention to the stylistic properties of these books resembling the children's books to a decorative toy, and emphasized the book covers and illustrations.Twenty-seven numbered pre-service teacher who used metaphor especially for the book cover page resembled children's books to a house, and conveyed the idea that the cover pages of children's books are as important as the outer appearance of a house.The pre-service teachers supported his thought through the expressions as "Cover and volume design in children's books should attract children, and should be appropriate to the development and age of children.As the outer appearance of a house attracts a tenants and make them say 'This house should be mine," the cover page and volume of the books should attract children and make them say "This book should be mine." One of the pre-service teachers trying to emphasize the stylistic properties of children's books resembled

Thoug Books
While the nature of children during the process of teaching entertainingly; however, shaping understanding that was prominent in books is worrisome in terms of being a compliment to "engaged and ideological" children's literature.Here it should not be ignored that didactic quality in literary qualified children's books is at a sensitive line and the dose of this sensitivity should be adjusted well.Apart from this, pre-service Turkish teachers' using metaphors related to education in terms of content was not an incidence.Similar findings were noticed to be in the relevant literature.For example, in the research carried out by Yazıcı-Okuyan (2009), it was understood that educative criteria of the children's books were especially regarded by teachers, and teachers preferred direct messages rather than the indirect ones in books.Similarly, in the study carried out by Arslan and Alamdar (2011), as well, pre-service teachers gave prominence to the educative aspect of children's books as in this study, and considered that children's books should be entertaining and didactic.Moreover, in the study of Maltepe (2009), pre-service teachers emphasized that children's books were required to be didactic.
Although Turkish teachers generally referred content properties of children's books and used metaphors related to education, a group of pre-service teachers indicated the literary properties literary qualified children's books should include through the metaphors they used.However, the number of pre-service teachers who looked for some indicators related to literature in children's books was limited.The pre-service teachers who revealed their perceptions related to the education of children through the metaphors they used pushed the importance of literature, literary pleasure and imagination in literary qualified children's books into the background.However, some sentences related to literature were essential in literary qualified children's books.As in general, education should not move ahead of literature in literary qualified children's books; the author should not put readers in a line like a teacher.
In the study, pre-service Turkish teachers did not refer another content property of literary qualified children's books apart from the "education" and "literature" aspects through the metaphors they used.Despite this, content properties were the one pre-service teachers mentioned mostly.This was also supported in the literature.The researches carried out by Yazıcı-Okuyan ( 2009), and Arslan and Alamdar revealed that teachers and pre-service teachers regarded content properties in children's books more.The research carried out by Temizkan (2011) was in contrast to the aforementioned research findings.The findings of Temizkan who determined that perceptions of pre-service Turkish teachers related to the content properties of children's books were low in his study could be arisen from the sample in his study and the lecturer influencing that sample.
Another dimension that was weak according to the thoughts of pre-service Turkish teachers related to the content properties of literary qualified children's books included language and narration properties.According to the metaphors pre-service Turkish teachers used, style, and especially language and narration properties that were fairly in the background according to the style properties, were included in the study in general words such as "vocabulary, language and style" being indicated by a few pre-service teachers.Although it could not be concluded here that pre-service teachers did not regard language and narration properties, it was possible to mention that some qualities related to language and narration were in the background rather than the content and style properties in children's books.This invalidated the thought of Sever (2010) who considered that the most important aspect that provided children's books to be proper to children was language and narration.When the relevant literature was reviewed, it was also noticed that the aspects related to language and narration in children's books were not considered as prominent by teachers and pre-service teachers.For example, in his study, Temizkan stated that Turkish teachers did not have adequate knowledge on language and narration.In this study, pre-service Turkish teachers' not making a sentence on any aspects such as sentences, figures of speech, rhetoric, and narration competence partially supported what Temizkan stated.
In conclusion, it was possible to mention that pre-service Turkish teachers emphasized content properties of literary qualified children's books, especially the educative aspect of children's books more through the metaphors they used, and relatively put the properties such as style, and language and narration in the background.In reference to these, the idea of "Lecturers who lecture undergraduate degree children's literature to the pre-service Turkish teachers should equally regard each dimension of literary qualified children's books" was possible to be offered as a suggestion.