Analyzing "children-playground-play" metaphors based on pre-service teachers' views

The worlds children create in play are built upon children's experiences and are created within an interaction and a reciprocity, but also involve aspects such as power. This study aimed to determine, describe and scrutunize the metaphors related to "Children-Playground-Play" metaphorical images of pre-service teachers via their self-generated metaphors from their lenses and to determine how the recent reforms in the teacher training system affect their metaphorical images on children's play activities. After metaphor generation procedure in the first step, 120 participants were required to explain 23 metaphors in the instrument to collect the study data in the second step. The raw data handled from the documents were analyzed and interpreted by "content analysis" technique. As a result of the study, the pre-service teachers' metaphorical images were found to be as % 48 Cognitive, % 35 Behavioristic and % 17 Socio-Situative Approaches. it is also inferred that there is a shift from instructive-centered to constructive-centered tendency in children's plays from preservice teachers' lenses.