Abstract:

One of the most crucial components of the Turkish National Education system is teachers. Therefore, the training of teachers in our country has always been at the forefront, and discussions about its content and processes have consistently been at the center of attention. Occasionally, teacher training has been pursued through various practices and models. Starting from the year 1980, the responsibility for teacher training was assigned to universities through higher education institutions. Today, within the context of teacher education undergraduate programs, one of the significant courses that focuses on imparting pedagogical competence to teacher candidates is the educational psychology course. In this context, the purpose of this study is to determine the perceptions of teacher candidates regarding the educational psychology course through the use of metaphors. The study employs the qualitative research design of a "case study." In line with this objective, metaphors used by teacher candidates (n=281) who are enrolled in various teacher education programs and have completed the course at Amasya University Faculty of Education were analyzed. In the study, teacher candidates were asked to complete an open-ended data collection tool by completing the sentence "The Educational Psychology Course is like… because…." When the metaphors created by students were analyzed using the content analysis method, it was observed that the participants generated a total of 93 metaphors. After evaluating the generated metaphors along with their justifications, when similar or synonymous ones were combined under a single metaphor, 18 metaphors were obtained. The finalized metaphors were categorized into three categories: "personal development," "nature and environment," and "art and culture."

Keywords: