A Metaphorical Analysis of the Meanings Attributed to the Education System by University Students: A Case Study

In recent years, with the influence of the constructivist perspective, the examination of students' own attitudes to learning processes have become important. Students' perception of the world, and their explanation of their learning experiences shapes their learning needs in the future. Therefore, it will be helpful for instructors to learn how students explain concepts and experiences which influence their learning directly, and what metaphors they use. The ultimate purpose of this study is to design positive and negative opinions of the students about the meanings attributed to the education system. In this study, two university students were studied, and the study was qualitatively designed by using case study method. How students perceive and give meaning to the education system was tried to be understood by employing an open-ended questionnaire and an observation form. Then, by using the collected data, the students' opinions were depicted with the concept mapping method. In the final phase, the students were asked to illustrate what they had metaphorized with a three-dimensional visual material. After the three-dimensional visual materials were evaluated, the data which had been collected from the cases were reported. The study shows that the students can illustrate both positive and negative metaphors by using their creativity, and their imaginations are vast enough to perceive the world in different ways. It is expected that the conclusions of this study will be beneficial for policy makers of education system. (Contains 4 figures.)