DefinePK

Abstract

In general, peace is considered to be the absence of hostility. Peace is so much of an important phenomenon that requires its teaching to be regulated. Instilling concept of peace in the individuals is one of the essential goals of every education system, which is done gradually in each level of education starting from basic education. It would be useful to make a situation assessment before deciding what and how to teach in education, and this can be done through the use of metaphors. Metaphors are one of the basic mental models that shape people's thoughts about the reality and the world. Metaphors allow the children to create their own perceptions and make sense of the situation or the event they encounter. The aim of this study is to investigate the perceptions of elementary school students about the concept of “peace” through metaphor analysis. The study group of the research consists of second and third grade elementary school students. 41 of these students were Turkey, 54 students were from TRNC, and 22 these students were from Syria. The research data were collected from these students by asking them to express their opinions through filling in the missing parts of sentences included in the questionnaire form. These sentences were prepared in the following format: “I compare peace to ………. . Because ….... ."In this way, the students were required to use a metaphor to fill in the first blank and to explain their reasoning in choosing that metaphor in the second blank, and their answers were analyzed. A total of 35 valid metaphors for the concept of peace were developed by the 117 elementary school students from three different countries. These metaphors were categorized under five themes, which are; positive metaphors, negative metaphors, metaphors of social value, metaphors of vitality and imaginative metaphors. On the other hand, in terms of the frequencies they were used by the students, metaphors of making peace (f = 24), friendship (f = 10), love (f = 9), motherfather (f = 8), war (f = 7) Ataturk (f = 6), beautifulness (f = 6), and happiness (f = 6) were identified as the metaphors, which were developed by students the most. It was concluded as a result of the study that the students from Syria defined the concept of peace mostly based on interest, that the students from Turkey defined the concept of peace mostly based on friendship, and that the students from TRNC defined the concept of peace mostly based making peace. The differences observed in the answers of students from different countries were due to the different geographical characteristics of these countries as well as the differences in the historical processes these countries have been through.