Pre-Service turkish language and primary school teachers' perceptions of constructivism by analyzing their concepts

Abstract

This study aims to research the extent to which the constructivist approach is reflected in the metaphors produced by pre-service teacher trainees on "teacher and learner" through the use of metaphor analysis. As commonly known, metaphors are linguistic, cognitive and mental structures providing clues as to a person's knowledge, values, beliefs, viewpoints and evaluations regarding a concept. The participants to the present study were 380 students studying in the Department of Primary School Education and Department of Turkish Education at the Faculty of Education, Cumhuriyet University. These pre-service teacher trainees were given a form, in which they were asked to write the metaphors and reasoning that they have produced for the concepts "teacher and learner." The collected data were analyzed using the metaphor analysis technique and these metaphors were examined based on teacher and learner roles suggested by the constructivist approach. According to the findings, most of the metaphors generated by the participants reflect teacher and learner roles in traditional approaches. It was concluded that the pre-service teacher trainees were not able to adopt and internalize the constructivist approach at satisfactory levels. © IDOSI Publications, 2013.