Investigation of the students' views about duty teachers in terms of hidden curriculum

Teachers, who play a critical role in fulfilling the objectives of the education system, have many responsibilities both inside and outside the classroom. One of the responsibilities of teachers outside the classroom is to carry out hall monitoring in order to ensure order at the hallways, garden, playground etc. Duty teachers help to maintain order of the school by observing students' behaviours during breaks and lunch time. The aim of this study is to reveal how duty teachers are perceived by secondary and high school students through metaphors and to analyze the students' metaphors in terms of hidden curriculum. Phenomenology design was used in this qualitative research. The data was gathered from 286 students attending three secondary and three high schools located in the central district of Malatya province during the 2020-2021 school year. The participating students were chosen according to the typical sampling method. Using an open-ended survey form, participating students were asked to complete the blanks in the sentence of "Duty teachers are like… Because...". Gathered data was analyzed by utilizing content analysis. As a result of the analysis, the views of students about the duty teachers are discussed within the context of the hidden curriculum and 11 distinct themes were emerged: reassurance, sense of mission and hardworking, benevolence, negative attitude towards teacher, guidance, having wisdom, learning school rules, restriction of freedom, external control, being fair, and indifference.