A Phenomenological Study of the Perceptions of Candidate Teachers about the Concepts of School, Teacher and Student in Their Dreams

It was aimed in this study to determine through the metaphors how the first and fourth grade candidate teachers in the faculty of education dream of the school, student and teacher and to discuss the findings in the context of teacher training. The sample of the study is composed of 315 candidate teachers (181 in the first-grade and 134 in the fourth-grade) studying at the Faculty of Education of a university in Turkey. The data of the research were collected with a data collection tool developed by the researchers consisting of 3 questions and content analysis was employed. The similarities-differences between the perceptions of the candidate teachers regarding the related concepts according to the grade variable were determined by frequency analysis. The metaphors that candidate teachers produced for the concept of school in their dreams/wishes gather under 10 themes, for the concept of teacher gather under 9 themes and for the concept of student gather under 9 themes. Each theme that emerged as the result of the analysis was examined according to the grade level of the candidate teachers and it was determined that there are similarities-differences in the perceptions of the candidate teachers for school, teacher and student concepts.