Compassionate love, democracy, and student centered education perceptions of students, teachers, and school principals

Perceptions of teachers and school principals, who constitute the basic inputs of the education system, on various subjects, determine the quality of social life and directly affect the formation of perceptions that students have and will have. In this context, the aim of this research is to determine the perception of compassionate love, democracy and student centered education of students, teachers and principals. The research was carried out within the scope of the phenomenologic design of qualitative research designs. The working group of the research was formed using "maximum diversity sampling method", which is one of the purposeful sampling methods. In variation, "school level", "school type", "school achievement status", "grade level", "branch" and "gender" variables were used. For each of the primary, secondary and high school levels, three schools were selected by considering the school types and success levels. The working group of the research consists of 630 students, 18 teachers and eight principals (total 656) who are either attending or working in these schools. In the research, "projection techniques" were used as data collection techniques. While collecting data from students, "word association technique", "sentence completion technique" and "story completion technique" were used, and while collecting data from teachers and principals "story interpretation technique" was used. "Concept analysis", "descriptive analysis-content analysis", "content analysis" and "discourse analysis" techniques, were used in the analysis of the data collected with word association, sentence completion, story completion, and story interpretation forms, respectively. It was determined that students have perceptions of both "romantic love" and "compassionate love". It was seen that the perception of "compassionate love" is more intense in primary school, however, it was also seen that as the levels progressed, the perception of "conditional love" is increased. It was determined that students think that those who have good qualities, those who respond to our love, and those who benefit us and those who treat us well should be loved. It was observed that love is "kindness" and "brotherhood" oriented in primary school, "respect" and "tolerance" in secondary school, and "respect" and "trust" oriented in high school. It was seen that students have person-centered and non-democratic perceptions beside people-centered perception regarding to the management of the country. It was also seen that some of the students perceive the terms rights and freedoms as a "no rule", while others adopt the prohibitive approach. It was determined that students have lack of knowledge, misconceptions and negative perceptions about the elements of democracy. It was determined that students' perceptions about the conducting of the courses are lecture oriented and traditional understanding of the use of materials is dominant. It was observed that the teachers are seen as the persons who are responsible for the courses and provided the control in the class, and the emphasis is placed on exams, performance, behaviors and class participation as assessment criteria. It was determined that students have the perception that decisions should be taken by either "teacher", "principal", or "head of the class". It was concluded that the teachers have two different the perceptions as waiting for or not waiting for a response for love. Teachers have a perception that love is based on mutual reactions and that love will change according to the behavior and reactions of the other people. It was seen that respect is the basis of teachers' perceptions of love and respect is thought to be a prerequisite. It was determined that teachers do not have a "person-centered" understanding but they think that democracy is dysfunctional. The teachers emphasized that democracy is a form of a regime based on the will of the people, the public joins the governance and has a voice in making decisions, and create the rules together.mIt was observed that the teachers think that although democracy is good in theory, it is dysfunctional in practice, that democracy is a tool of oppression / domination, that it is a tool used by developed countries to achieve their hidden agenda, and that it does not fit into the Islamic geography because it is a value created by the western countries. It was concluded that the teachers have two different perceptions that the student should be in the center and the teacher should be in the center. It was also concluded that some of the teachers preferred that the teacher is supposed to be in the authority position rather than a guide position in the classroom. It was seen that teachers' opinions about student centered education contain inconsistencies, they do not actually know student centered education and they do not believe in the philosophy of it. It was seen that the principals have two different perceptions of love, which a response should and should not be expected. While there are some principals who have compassionate love, some principals have an understanding of love based on response and expectations. It was seen that some principals have the perception that sovereignty should belong to the people and while the others think that sovereignty should belong to the principals. The principals think that the majority is not always be right, that a single person can make the right decisions on his own, that democracy is not a good form of government, that the majority rule the state, that the people's thoughts are shaped by various means, and that democracy is used by developed countries. It was seen that the principals have two different perceptions that the student should be in the center and that the teacher should be in the center. It was seen that some principals emphasized the roles of the teacher guiding, orienting, observing, becoming a learning partner, encouraging, and motivating. It was also seen that some principals do not accept student centered education approach and had a traditional perception of education. They think that students cannot be given the right to choose and that students do not have the capacity to make their own decisions. Based on the results obtained at the end of the research, various suggestions have been developed for Higher Education Board, Ministry of Education, teachers and principals, and researchers.