Preschool education and primary school pre-service teachers' perceptions about classroom management: A metaphorical analysis

Abstract

The aim of the research was to determine the perceptions of preschool and primary school teachers about classroom management by means of metaphors. The sample which selected by the use of convenience sampling techniques was drawn from preschool and primary school undergraduate students who had taken the "Classroom Management" course in the 2012-2013 academic years. There has a total of 163 participants from two state universities in Turkey. The perceptions were obtained from the question "What does 'classroom management' seem to you?" and from the answers they explained by using the "because" conjunction. The content analysis technique was used to analyse the data. The answers of the participant pre-service teachers were categorized, and suggested that most of those categories were of positive perceptions except that a category included negative perceptions. The findings suggest that at the end of the study, across 10 different categories, preschool pre-service teachers developed 60 metaphors whereas primary school pre-service teacher developed 48 metaphors.