Abstract:

The success and quality of a country’s educational system is properly proportionate to the skills and quality of the teachers who work within this system. Therefore, it is believed that the views of the students of the pedagogical training program, which are potential teachers candidates to educate future generations, are important. Therefore, in this study, the aim of the pedagogical formation program is to reveal the perceptions of students about the teachers and ideal teachers concepts through metaphors. For this purpose, one of the qualitative research patterns is the phenomenology (fenomenology) design used. The study study group was formed by 102 students who were determined according to the standard sample method and trained in the pedagogical formation certificate program at the University of Gaziantep in the spring period of the 2018-2019 academic year. The data was collected in a form prepared by the researcher in accordance with the purpose of the research and analyzed by the method of content analysis. 66 different metaphors were produced by the participants to the teacher concept, and these metaphors were gathered in 12 categories. Those with the highest frequency of these categories are teachers as educators/developers, teachers as a source of knowledge and teachers as mechanics/unicities. On the other hand, 74 different metaphors were created by the participants toward the idea of the ideal teacher, and these metaphors were gathered in 12 categories. The highest frequency among these categories is the teacher as a educator/developer, the teacher as a source of knowledge and the teacher as a source of motivation. Finally, in the study, recommendations were developed taking into account the findings and results obtained.

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