Metaphors of the Students in the Department of History Regarding the Concept of “Value”

Abstract

History course curricula provide students with values along with knowledge and skills. The aim of this study is to determine the metaphors related to the concept of value that the students of the history departments have. The study group of the research consists of 75 senior students (from both "day time education" and "evening education") who continue their education in the Department of History of Kirklareli University Faculty of Arts and Sciences in the fall semester of 2018-2019 academic year. In order to collect data, participants were asked to complete the forms which included the sentence “Values are like………… because…….”. The metaphors proposed by the students were categorized in terms of their common characteristics. Phenomenological design, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in this study. The obtained data were analyzed with content analysis method. Additionally, a quantitative data analysis was performed via IBM SPSS Statistics 20 program as well. Descriptive statistics of the collected data were presented in detail. Moreover, it was analyzed whether there is an association between “the main categories of value metaphors given as samples” and the following variables: “Gender”, “Education Type”, “Mother’s Educational Status”, “Father’s Educational Status”, “Type of High School Student Graduated from”, “Settlement Unit Where Most of Childhood was Spent”, “Perception of Socioeconomic Status”, “Number of Siblings”, “Hometown (as region)", “Family Type” and “Relationship Status of the Parents”. As a result of the Chi-Square Independence Test, it turned out that there was no association between these variables and “the main categories of value metaphors given as examples” (p> 0.05).