Özet:

The purpose of this study is to put forth how the preschool teacher candidates perceive the concept of democracy. Within this scope, 163 students studying in Preschool Education Program in Anadolu University, who participated in the study voluntarily, were made to fill in the open ended questionnaire which would demonstrate with what they associated the concept of democracy and why they did this association and next, the data obtained from 125 of the questionnaires were assessed. As a result, teacher candidates’ metaphors toward the concept of democracy were classified in nine different categories. The metaphors obtained were identified as; freedom, different opinions existing together, cooperation, having an essential importance, equity-justice, and capability to change based on initiative, impossibility aspect. The teacher candidates mostly formed metaphors in the equity – justice category. The mostly repeated metaphor appeared to be the balance metaphor. As a result of the research, it was found out that the teacher candidates didn’t evaluate the concept of democracy in all aspects but focused mostly on the management aspect. Furthermore, although it was found out that they associated the concept of democracy with concepts as politics or governing of a country, they didn’t associate it with the education processes.

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