Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine the perception of teachers by 10 year-old primary school childrens by the metaphors they developed. The sample covers totally 441 children [224 females (50.8%) and 217 males (49.2%)] living in Izmir, Turkey. Participants were asked to complete the prompt “Teacher is like…, because…’’. In identifying their perceptions, the qualitative research model (Holloway & Wheeler, 2002) was utilized, which contributes to the investigation of the individual’s perceptions, feelings, and experiences within the framework of Phenomenological design. At the end of the research female students produced 52 metaphors, and males did 44 for teacher images. However, 7 metaphors were commonly created by both genders. They were categorized in 8 conceptual themes. The children’s perceptions of “teacher” were clustered especially in the conceptual theme of Family Member (25%) and Warm-hearted Person (8%), with emotional and relational feelings which can be explained by the children’s attachment relations (Sabol & Pianta, 2012), that are similar for their families and their teachers. Gender was found to be significantly related with the images of teachers.

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