Abstract:

The purpose of this research is to identify the mental images that students of the Child Development and Social Services Department have about the concept of "risked child" using the metaphor technique. The study’s work group consists of a total of 123 students studying in the Department of Social Services with the Department of Child Development of the Faculty of Health Sciences in the 2019-2020 academic year. The data of the research is collected by the quality research method, the work plan is organized in the form of "event science". Students involved in the study were asked to complete the phrase "the child at risk is like... because..." in order to reveal the metaphors they have about the concept of "child at risk". Students’ statements formed the basic data source of this research. The metaphors in this work, Kuyucu and ark. (2013), Akgün (2016), Gülen and Dönmez (2020), was created by studying the conceptual categories they created in their work. According to the analysis of the data obtained, a total of 40 students from the Department of Child Development and 44 students from the Department of Social Services have developed metaphors. The concept of "Children at Risk" has been found that the metaphors developed by the Children's Development Department are six conceptual categories, while the Social Services Department students are gathered under five conceptual categories. The most metaphorized category when the metaphors created by the students regarding the concept of "Child under risk" are divided into conceptual categories, the child development department's students are "Child as an intended entity" and "Child as a formable raw material" and the social service department's students are "Child as an intended entity" and "Child as a mysterious entity".

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