Abstract:

Humankind has faced pandemics many times throughout history and suffered heavy losses. The most distinctive feature of pandemics evaluated as human disasters in the academic literature is that the type of the disease, the way of its occurrence and spread, and the feature of reappearance always exists, although time varies. As a matter of fact, pandemics have come back to the fore of the world in the 21st century, and they have deeply affected humanity in many aspects such as economic, social and cultural. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic. Therefore, the concept of pandemic has settled directly into daily life and has become known to people regardless of education level, age range, gender, type of profession. However, due to the psycho-social, socio-economic and socio-cultural effects of the pandemic, the concept of pandemic has a different meaning for many people. In this study, it is aimed to determine the metaphorical perceptions of social studies teacher candidates regarding the concept of pandemic as future teachers. In this study, which has been carried out with the phenomenology method, the participants consisted of 200 students in total studying at all grade levels of the undergraduate program of the Fırat University Faculty of Education, Social Studies Education Department, in the fall semester of the 2021-2022 academic year. As a result of the study, 129 metaphors have been developed by the participants regarding the concept of pandemic. These identified metaphors have been evaluated in 9 conceptual categories as “restriction”, “psychological and spiritual impact”, “uncertainty”, “spreading”, “domination and influence”, “economic impact”, “social life and human relations”, “being conscious”, and “resting”.

Keywords: