Öğretmenlerin “Ara Tatil” ve “İdeal Ara Tatil” Kavramlarına İlişkin Metaforik Algıları

The aim of this research was to determine the teachers’ perceptions about the concept of "midterm break" and "ideal midterm break" through metaphors. The research was designed descriptively and conducted in the phenomenology pattern, one of the qualitative research methods. 414 teachers working in public schools in the 2019-2020 academic year constitute the working group of the research. As the data collection tool, “Midterm break was like …, because…” regarding the midterm break practice, which was implemented for the first time in 2019 in Turkey. And “Midterm break should be like …, because …”, an open-ended online questionnaire containing conceptual/ideal metaphor questions and demographic information were used. The collected data were analyzed with content analysis method in qualitative research design. In the analysis of the data, categories and themes were created from the metaphors that emerged with the coding based on the analogy, characterization and evaluation aspects of the figurative images. Whether the metaphors represent conceptual categories has been confirmed by the researchers. As a result of the analysis, 274 different metaphors related to the midterm break in seven conceptual categories, and 310 different metaphors in the ideal midterm break were collected in nine ideal categories. The believes that the midterm holiday increases the motivation and provides opportunities and on contrast the believes that midterm holiday is waste of time and cannot be conducted well form the basis of conceptual themes. On the other hand the themes regarding the ideal midterm holiday provided by the teachers are improving, can be applied, resting, enjoying and open to participation. As the result of the study, it is found that the meaning given to midterm holiday by the teachers is positive and it is seen that the belief that it will be more planned and useful by the time is common.