The analyse of secondary school students? and teachers? mental images of school and ideal school by using metaphor

This study aims to examine how secondary school students and teachers conceptualize their school and ideal school life through the help of metaphors.Participants of this study included 576 students and 55 teachers from 6 secondary schools located in different districts of Ankara. In order to collect data, participants were asked to answer the questions: ?If I want you to associate your school with a living creature, an object, a hero of a tale or a historical identity, what would you would prefer to use? Why?? and ?If I want you to associate your ideal school with a living creature, an object, a hero of a tale or a historical identity, what would you would prefer to use? Why?? Descriptive data analysis was utilized to analyze the data.Overall results indicated that the participants had negative attitudes towards school; school was perceived as a place for hindering the development, highly disciplined and therefore as a place that should be abandoned as soon as possible. Many students used ?prison? metaphor to describe their school. They stated that there wasn?t freedom and democratic environment at their school. It was also found that there wasn?t learner-centered education system and schools still had the features of pre-industrial society.It was found that majority of the participants perceived school as a loving, care-giving and a home like place. They used ?family/home? metaphor to describe the positive atmosphere they had at their schools.Results also indicated that lower grade students had more positive attitudes towards their schools than higher grade students. Alhough lower grade students perceived their schools as care-giving and home-like places, higher grade students perceived their schools as prohibitive places.The participants from the schools with low socio-economic status held relatively more positive conception towards their schools than middle or high socio-economic status schools. Although low socio-economic status school participants stated that their school gave confidence and happiness; middle and high socio-economic status school participants stated that their schools were boring and always gave punishments to the students.Results concerning the ideal school indicated that both students and teachers described the main functions of ideal school as giving entertainment, happiness and reassuring places. Participants also described their ideal school as a place of knowledge and enlightment.