Analysis of educational movies in Turkish cinema in terms of constituents of education

Cinema is a new and influential art settled in societies' cultures since 19th century. Since its first appearance, it is also an important tool to examine the evolution of anything that a society has gonethrough. Especially education and its constituents have been the subjects of the movies since cinema started to develop. The constituents and figures of education which are the most crucial tools for a country to survive have also found a place in Turkish cinema. Within this context, how the teacher, school administrator, students, educational rituels and educational settings are interpreted in Turkish cinema are the fields that should be analyzed. In this study, content analysis, which is one of the methods of qualitative research, was used to examine the portrayals of teachers, school administrators, students, educational rituals and educational settings in 52 movies that contain K12 schools consisting of primary, secondary and high schools and which were made from 1949 to 2015 in Turkish cinema. In the analysis process of the data, descriptive analysis was chosen to interpret the common themes of each predecided categories watching each film. As a consequence of the research, the most frequent features were determined and grouped into themes.Teachers are mostly depicted as countryman, represantative of development-saver, against bigotry, poor but happy, idealist-dedicated, trustworthy- respected, touching to students, representative of the official ideology, authoritarian, against student and buffoon images. School administrators are mostly depicted as authoritarian, buffoon, against students, money grubber, student friendly, bureaucrat and idealist-dedicated. The profiles of students are examined according to the educational settings in the movies: primary school (separated as rural and urban), state high schools, private high schools and home environments. The most common educational rituals which were observed in the movies are uniform wearing, greeting, classical seating arrangement, punishment, march/poem/vows and national celebrations/commemorations.Similar to the students' profile section, educational settings are investigated according to the rank and types of schools such as rural primary school, urban primary schools, state high school, private high schools/ colleges and home.