Perceptions of Teacher Candidates Toward Syrian Refugees: A Metaphor Study

Abstract

The aim of the study is to identify the perceptions of teacher candidates, who are studying at different department and different grades of education faculty, towards Syrian refugees through metaphors. Phenomenology approach, one of the qualitative research methods, was used since it is the most appropriate method for studies studying individual’s perceptions through metaphors. The study group of the research consists of 264 university students who are studying teacher education at a university in Turkey. The sentence “Syrian is like ……. because ……….” were given to teacher candidates and they were asked to complete the sentence during data collection process. The process of analyzing and interpreting the metaphors is done in five stages. These are as follows; “naming stage", " Sorting (clarification and elimination) stage", " Sample metaphor compilation and categorization stage", " Establishing the inter-rater reliability rate" and “Analyzing the data quantitatively”. According to the result of this study, teacher candidates have mostly (117) negative thoughts about Syrian refugees and immigrants. Following the negative thoughts teacher candidates have, they mostly have opinions about Turkey and Turkey’s condition with refugees. In fact, these teacher candidates (63 of them) are worried about the Turkey’s and local people’s future. Another result of the study is that some of the teacher candidates (38 of them) have pity thoughts about refugees.