Abstract:

This study aims to determine the perceptions of Imam Hatip High School students regarding Imam Hatip High School, Imam Hatip High School Vocational Course Teacher and Imam Hatip High School Administration via metaphors. In the study, phenomenological design, one of the qualitative research designs, was used. The study group, which was determined by criterion sampling, which is one of the purposive sampling methods, consists of 412 students studying in 9th and 12th degrees in 5 different Imam Hatip High Schools in 2018-2019 academic year. The data of the study were collected from the participants by completing these sentences: "Imam Hatip High School is like... because...", "Imam Hatip High School Vocational Course Teacher is like... because..." and "Imam Hatip High School Administration is like... because...". The Inductive content analysis technique was used to identify the metaphorical language in the analysis of the data obtained. Themes/categories created as a result of content analysis were analyzed in frequency, percentage, and cross-table in SPSS program. According to the research, it was determined that students' perceptions regarding Imam Hatip High School and Imam Hatip High School vocational Course Teacher were positive; on the other hand, the perceptions regarding the Imam Hatip High Administration were negative. Besides, the metaphoric perceptions of male students, students who graduated from imam hatip secondary school and 9th-grade students were determined to be more positive. Summary: The primary purpose of this study is to determine the perceptions of Imam Hatip High School students related to Imam Hatip High School, the vocational course teacher and administration of Imam Hatip High School via metaphors. Imam Hatip High Schools, which are in Turkish educational system, were opened in 1924 and are the secondary education institutions that educate the students for both the profession and higher education. On average, 40% of the lessons in the curriculum are religious vocational, and 60% of them are cultural. Vocational course teachers teach occupational courses. In the administration of these schools, there are both the vocational course teachers and teachers from different branches. By the academic year 2018-2019 in Turkey, 11% of the students attending high school prefer these schools. This study was planned in the phenomenological (fenomenology) design, which is among the qualitative research designs. The study group which was determined through the criterion sampling of the purposive sampling methods consists of 412 students who received their education at 9th and 12th degrees at five different Imam Hatip High Schools in 2018-2019 academic year. The research data were collected via the metaphors, which were used as the data collection technique in qualitative research. The research data came from the following sentences of the participants "The Imam Hatip High School is like ..........because...“The Imam Hatip High School Vocational course teacher is like ....; because ....”, “The administration of Imam Hatip High School is like ....”because...” The inductive content analysis method was used in the analysis of the data. The themes/categories (positive/negative) which were made as a result of the content analysis were analyzed as frequency, percentage, and cross-table in the SPSS program. It was observed in the research that the students produced 140 metaphors related to The Imam Hatip High School, 147 metaphors related to the vocational course teachers and 161 metaphors related to the administrators. As a result of the analysis of the metaphors they produced, it was understood that they gather metaphors fundamentally in two categories as positive and negative. Approximately two-thirds of the students (63.3%) who participated in the research produced the positive metaphors (93) related to The Imam Hatip High School, while about one-third of them (36.7%) produced the negative metaphors (47). It was observed that the most repeated metaphors which were positively produced are "Our House (33/8,01%)", "Family (24/5,83%)", and "Quran Course (14/3,40%)"; the most repeated negative metaphors are "Jail/Prison (76/18,45%), "General high school (12/18,45%)"" "A bad place (6/6%)". According to these results, it can be inferred that more than half of the students have a positive metaphoric perception related to The Imam Hatip High School. It was observed that the female students perceived The Imam Hatip High Schools more negative than the male students. It was determined that one-fifth of the students (22.6%) participating in the research produced negative (49) metaphors whereas three out of four of them (77.4%) produced positive (98) related to the vocational course teachers. It was observed that the most repeated metaphors among the positive are "He/She is a good person (34/8,25%)", He/She is like a sister/brother (32/7,77%)", "Family (31/7,52%)"; the most repeated metaphors as negative are "He/She is a bad person (10/2,42%)", "Other teacher (7/1,70%)", "Boring (6/1,46%)". This finding indicates that most of the students have a positive metaphoric perception related to the vocational course teachers. It was determined that two-thirds of the students (65%) produced the negative metaphors (94) while one-thirds of the students (35%) produced the positive metaphors (67) related to the administrators. It was observed that the most repeated metaphors among the positive metaphors are "Family (22/5,34%)", "He/She is a good person (14/3,40%)", "He/She is a self-disciplined person (7/1,70%)"; the most repeated negative metaphors are "He/She is a guardian (32/7,77%)", "He/She is an extreme self-disciplined person (30/7,28%)", "He/She is a bad person 30/7,28%)".Remarkably, the other metaphors given by the students are the ones with force such as "dictator, oppressor, police, jail, head of jail, acrimonious, oppressor dad, hall of court, commander, detective, military service." The data can infer that the administrators are perceived negatively by more than half of the students; the administrators create a public opinion as oppressive educators in the students' minds. In the research, it was seen that the female students (77%) have more negative perceptions regarding the administration of school rather than the male students (41,3%). As a result, it is observed that IHH students' metaphoric perceptions related to their schools and vocational course teachers have a positive aspect. Still, their opinions related to the administrators of school are negative. From this point of view, it can be concluded that it is necessary to make different studies on the students' perceptions related to the administrators.

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