METAPHORICAL PERCEPTIONS OF FACULTY OF EDUCATION STUDENTS REGARDING SPECIAL EDUCATION

Abstract

This research examines the metaphorical perceptions of teacher candidates at the Faculty of Education, and is designed using the case study method. It was conducted with the participation of 68 teacher candidates studying at Amasya University's Faculty of Education during the 2022-2023 academic year. The research included students from the English Language Teaching and Turkish Language Teaching departments. A two-phase form was used by researchers to determine the metaphorical perceptions of the participants related to special education. In the first phase, participants were asked to complete the sentence "Special education is like...." in order to determine which aspect of special education they associated with; instruction processes, profession, educational structure, difficulty-hardship, goal- purpose, love, tool-equipment, material-tool-equipment, benefit, guide, opportunity and need. In the second phase, participants were asked to explain their associations by filling in the section starting with "Because...". Data analysis was done by descriptive and content analysis. The findings of the research show that the total of 592 metaphors produced by the teacher candidates were grouped under 11 themes: “Profession”, “Educational Structure”, “Instruction Processes”, “Tool-Equipment-Material”, “Benefit”, “Goal-Purpose”, “Love”, “Guide”, “Need”, “Opportunity”. The results of the study reveal that teacher candidates produced the most metaphors in the areas of Educational Structure (174), Instruction Processes (96), Need (63) and Benefit (60).