Metaphoric Perceptions of Primary School Teachers on the Concept of Curriculum

Abstract

One of the most important elements in educational system is curriculum. Being comprehensive and multidimensional notion and including the all learning experiences lived by individuals inside and outside school, curriculum plays a role as a bridge that transforms educational politics in a country to practice. Indoubtedly, achieving aimed output in the curriculums depends on how the teachers who will practice the curriculum perceive and practice curriculum. One of the tools to determine teacher perceptions is metaphor. Accordingly, in the study it was aimed to determine the metaphors primary school teachers used regarding "education program" and the study was designed as qualitatively in the survey method. This study was conducted with the participation of 200 primary school teachers from 16 primary schools in the city center of Eskischir. A questionnaire consisted of open ended questions has been created to determine the views of teachers regarding education program. The questions are generally similar to "Education program is like ..... ; because ...............". Teachers' views regarding education program has been analyzed with descriptive analysis technique. Chi-square test was applied in order to evaluate whether the appearing categories differ according to department of the primary school teachers. After the study, it's been seen that teachers created 200 metaphors. These metaphors comprised categories as "set of elements to be prepared carefully", "a changeable structure", "directive", "pressure element", "multidimensional", "complex structure", and "indispensable element". As a result, it has been found out that teachers had positive thoughts regarding curriculum. Also, it was observed that the conceptual categories formed related to the metaphors that teachers use have significant difference according to their departments.