Metaphors of teacher candıdates ’ regardıng the concept of “ non-governmental organızatıons ” ( NGOs )

In this study, a learning area in social studies curriculum called “Groups, institutions and social organizations” was used. It can be seen that an important role for teachers in a social studies programme is to benefit from non-governmental organizations. The aim of this study is to investigate primary school teacher candidates’ social metaphors to describe the concept of non-governmental organizations. In the study, phenomonology method is used which is widely employed in a qualitative research approach. The participants of the study are 300 teacher candidates attending Afyon Kocatepe University, Faculty of Education. The Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) Metaphor Form is used to collect data. The findings obtained show that the participants developed 47 NGO-related metaphors. The most commonly reported category is society (38.31%) followed by the category of others (34.48%) and values (26.81%).


INTRODUCTION
Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) play an important role in the development process of countries.Their contributions are particularly significant in supporting literacy, community schools, health education, early childhood care, skills training and other forms of learning.By this way, they help people to improve their living conditions (Fielmua and Bandie, 2012).
There are many different definitions of NGOs: Keane (1994) defined these volunteer organizations as those which deal with unofficial activities, and which have pressure and control over public institutions through their activities.Doğan (2002) regarded NGOs as those organizations which are sensitive to social injustice, develop solutions, and contribute to social awareness.Acı (2005) considered them to be a field of activity where attempts occur without any external force.The functions of NGOs can be given as follows (Talas, 2011): 1. Helping individuals to express their needs publicly through forming public opinion 2. Being a balancing item against market values in order to develop a pluralist society.3. Producing individuals who have experince about participatory and pluralist culture as well as about management.4. Developing pilot projects, finding sources for these projects, educational activities through these projects, assuming responsibility about governments' policies about social welfare and employment.
Therefore, it can be seen that NGOs include realtionship between the state and the individuals based on a legal framework, and they may employ informed knowledge, higher levels of trust and can be easily organized (Çaha, 2000, 54).It is possible to develop the following definition of NGOs based on the qualities stated earlier: "NGOs have volunteer workers who try to find viable solutions for social problems and are an integrated part of democratic life".
Teachers must not only be present and teach (prevailing teacher absenteeism rates are 33%) in class, they must engage the children in joyful activities, and strive to make education interesting for the rural poor through the use of new teaching/learning methods.Children must not only attain basic reading and writing skills, they should develop both cognitive and noncognitive skills.The curriculum and pedagogy in schools should be relevant, and meaningful for the life situations of the children attending school.
In the face of such growing expectations from school education, the State finds it difficult to meet not only the basic needs of children (Jagannathan, 2001).Citizenship education and also social studies aim at helping students acquire higher levels of knowledge, understand the relationship between knowledge and action, develop a commitment to act to improve the world, and acquire the skills needed to participate in civic action.Thus, it should assist the students to learn to change the World (Banks, 2001).Benefitting from NGOs can help teachers with this aim.
NGOs may deal with educational problems and at the same time, these organizations may directly get involve in educational activities in which certain skills or values are focused with the aim of producing effective citizens.Such efforts seem to contribute to the integration of learning into real life, and to improve the quality of education.Educational cooperation with NGOs vary significantly in terms of producing effective citizens.In universities, NGOs have some activities, which have positive effects on university students and pre-service teachers.Examples of such positive effects on preservice teachers include socialization and awareness both of which are necessary for their future teaching professions.
In recent years, active citizenship and participation in society have been in the forefront of debates in European societies.The number of people who vote and participate in activities in society is decreasing all the time.Many politicians are surprised as to the reasons why young people are so passive in this respect.Schools have an important role in increasing awareness of matters in society, and NGOs in turn have a very important role in educating teachers for future generations (Kallioniemi, 2011).In universities, there are some courses which have to benefit non-governmental organizations such as "Community Service Practices Course (CSPC)".In CSPC, teacher candidates have to identify a problem in the society, and they have to solve this problem in cooperation with NGO which already works to solve the problem.Moreover, it can be stated that participating in the activities of NGOs can be used to produce active citizens.Students may acquire several citizenship skills such as developing a sense of citizenship, sensitivity about social problems, being aware of social roles and responsibilities and employing their rights as citizens through being a member of NGOs.
The field of Social Studies is that part of the elementary and high school curriculum which has primary responsibility for helping students to develop the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values needed to participate in the civic life of their local communities, the nation and the world (Banks, 1990).Social studies education employs information and methods from social sciences and humanities to produce effective citizens who can make informed decisions and solve problems (Öztürk, 2009).Safran (2008) argues that social studies courses provide students with the opportunity to acquire the values, attitudes and behaviors necessary for life in society.Erden (no date) stated that for social studies education process both their home, school and immediate environment are significant.In schools, students acquire theoretical information and skills which allow them to adapt to social life.All institutions in society have their unique functions which contribute to the continuation of society.Therefore, individuals should be familiar with institutions, aware of their responsibilities and expectations.In order for students to learn information, skills and values outside school, they should integrate their learning with real life.When learning acquired in social studies courses is employed in real life, the students can be effective members of a society.Therefore, learning acquired in social studies should be supported by extra curricular activities.On the other hand, the constructivist approach which dominates today's educational activities requires a change in the traditional teaching and learning process.Therefore, learning acquired in social studies cannot be limited to classroom environment, and should be supported by extra curricular activities (Çengelci, 2013).
Selanik-Ay (2010) argued that in order to produce qualified individuals and effective citizens in social studies courses, social institutions should be employed in terms of developing a relationship between schools and society or between schools and real life.NGOs are also part of social institutions.At the level of basic education, effective citizenship can be taught through social projects and social involvement activities.
NCSS (2016) stated that a social studies curriculum includes a theme called "individuals, groups, and institutions" which typically appears in units and courses dealing with sociology, anthropology, psychology, political science, and history.Young children should be given the opportunity to examine various institutions that affect their lives and influence their thinking.They should be assisted in recognizing the tensions that occur when the goals, values, and principles of two or more institutions or groups conflict.They should also have opportunities to explore ways in which institutions (such as voluntary associations, or organizations, non-governmental organizations) are created to respond to changing individual and group needs.High school students must understand the paradigms and traditions that undergird social and political institutions.They should be provided with opportunities to examine, use, and add to the body of knowledge offered by the behavioral sciences and social theory in relation to the ways people and groups organize themselves around common needs, beliefs, and interests (http://www.socialstudies.org/standards/strands).
New concepts such as non-cognitive skills or development of positive attributes among children emotional intelligence have emerged, which need qualitative studies to establish causal factors leading to improved learning.Joyful learning may have an intrinsic value but evidence on link to learning achievements is required.Studies are needed to document learning outcomes of children in various settings so that best practices in teaching/ learning at the primary stage can be identified.This calls for tools and methods for more broad-based student assessment.NGOs stress the need for school-based action research with teachers playing an important role (Jagannathan, 2001).All partners agreed that one of the most important successes of NGOs working in education has been the increased access to schooling and active local community involvement in the quality of education (Miller-Grandvaux et al., 2002).
Institutions are the formal and informal political, economic, and social organizations that help us carry out, organize, and manage our daily affairs.Schools, religious institutions, families, government agencies, and the courts all play an integral role in our lives.They are organizational embodiments of the core social values of those who comprise them, and play a variety of important roles in socializing individuals and meeting their needs, as well as in the promotion of societal continuity, the mediation of conflict, and the consideration of public issues.It is important that students know how institutions are formed, what controls and influences them, how they control and influence individuals and culture, and how institutions can be maintained or changed.
The study of individuals, groups, and institutions, drawing upon sociology, anthropology, and other disciplines, prepares students to ask and answer questions such as: What is the role of institutions in this and other societies?How am I influenced by institutions?How do institutions change?What is my role in institutional change?Students identify those institutions that they encounter.They analyze how the institutions operate and find ways that will help them participate more effectively in their relationships with these institutions.
Finally, students examine the foundations of the institutions that affect their lives, and determine how they can contribute to the shared goals and desires of society.Nummenpää (2012) aimed in his bachelor thesis to look at whether or not NGOs have the potential to improve primary education in New Delhi; the analysis of which will be based on qualitative, semi-structured interviews conducted on site.
The conclusion from the study is that these NGOs play an important role in primary education, not through directly providing education, but by raising awareness of the importance of education, advocacy and by preparing children for their studies.Furthermore, benefitting from NGOs for educational purposes is important for training teachers too.There is no study on the use of NGOs for educational purposes in Turkey.However, NGOs may contribute to numerous basic education courses, and also on social development of students.For instance, through such a cooperation with NGOs, students may get involved in activities which allos them to combine learning with real world.In this regard, teachers' perceptions about NGOS as well as their involvement in NGO-based activities are significant.The aim of this study is to reveal teacher candidates' perceptions about NGOs via metaphors.

METHODOLOGY
This study was caried out using the pattern of basic interpretive qualitative study.Merriam (2002) described interpretative qualitative research as the construction of meaning.Merriam (2002) stated that, symbolic interactionism informs this type of research.
Symbolic interactionism focuses on the interpretation of human beings within a certain context of the larger society as the individual interacts with other people.Symbolic interactionism emphasizes seeing the world through the other person's perspective and placing ourselves in the other person's situation.In a smilar manner, interpretive qualitative research emphasizes subjectivity on people's behaviors, and realizes that people's interpretations are based on everyday experiences that has a meaning for them (Merriam, 2002).
In the study, basic interpretive qualitative study was employed to reveal the perceptions and views of the teacher candidates' about NGOs via metaphors.This study focuses on teacher candidates' perceptions of the "NGOs", and metaphorical analysis technique turns out to be an effective way to draw details from the collected qualitative data.Providing new understandings, metaphors which are defined simply as understanding something from another perspective, create our thoughts and actions at the same time (Lokoff and Johnson, 1980).
Metaphors are valuable research tools providing a new outlook into educational practices and theories (Jensen, 2006cited in Argon, 2015).To determine participants, the accessible case sampling method was used, which is one of the sampling methods of qualitative research.In an accessible case sampling method, the reseracher chooses a close and easy-to-access case.The participants of the study were 300 teacher candidates attending different departments such as classroom teaching, pre-service education and social studies education of the faculty of education at Afyon Kocatepe University.However, the data obtained from 40 participants were excluded from the analysis beceuse they did not provide accurate jusitification for the metaphors.Therefore, the total ).On the other hand, 152 participants reported that they were planning to be a member of an NGO (58%), while 70 did not report such an intention (26%).Therefore, only half of them were NGO member.It can be argued that these pre-service teachers should be actively encourage to involve in NGO actitivities.
In order to collect data, a form was used.The form contained the expression "Non-governmental organizations is like/similar to .….. because ……" which was prepared for this study.Firstly, the forms which were prepared to learn teacher candidates' perceptions towards non-governmental organizations by means of metaphors were delivered to the teacher candidates to be filled in.Before filling in the delivered forms, teacher candidates were informed about the subject and purpose of the study, and several explanations were made about how to fill forms by telling the metaphor concept according to the definitions in the literature.
Moreover, students who participated in the study were asked to explain the metaphor that they wrote in the relevant blanks after the comma by giving a reason.The forms filled in by the students in light of those explanations were recollected, and the data collection procedure ended.In the statements given above the word "like" is used to obtain a clear connection between "topic of metaphor" and "source of metaphor".The word "because" is used to reveal the justification for the metaphor (Saban, 2009).Apart of this, an interview was carried out with the participants about their views concerning NGOs.The obtained data was analysed following five steps (Saban 2009): coding and selection, developing a sample metaphor list, identifying categories, establishments of validity and reliability and transforming metaphors into quantitative data.

Coding and selection
At this step, the metaphors developed by the participants were reviewed.Each metaphor identified was simply coded.40 papers were excluded from the analysis in that there was no metaphors or no accurate justifications.

Developing a sample metaphor list
The metaphors selected were listed alphabetically and reviewed.In direct quotations, only related part were used, and three full stops were used to indicate it.

Identifying categories
At this step, the metaphors were classified under related categories.It was found that the metaphors developed by the participants belonged to three categories.

Reliability and validity
One of the requirements in qualitative studies to establish validity is to provide information about how the data were obtained (Yıldırım and Şimşek, 2006).Therefore, in the study, data analysis process was explained in detail and all metaphors identified under three categories were given.Concerning reliability, the data were analysed by the authors separately, and also by a field specialist.Experts' metaphor allocation was compared with the researchers', amounts of the similarities and contrasts were found, and reliability of the study was calculated on the "Reliability = ((Similarities)) : (Similarities + Contrasts)) x 100" equation (Miles and Huberman, 1994).The intercoder value was found to be 92%, indicating the realibility of the study.

Quantitative data and interpretation
At this step, the metaphors developed by the participants were transformed into quantitative data.More specifically, the metaphors were categorized and how many NGO-related categories covered in each category were found.Then their frequencies and percentages were found and presented with tables.Using these quantitative findings, the metaphor categories were discussed and interpreted.

FINDINGS
This section presents the discussion of findings.Findings acquired in relation with the teacher candidates' metaphors on the concept of the NGOs were tabulated, classified, analyzed and interpreted.In Table 2, the metaphors created by the teacher candidates are listed in alphabetical order, and the amount of teacher candidates and respective metaphors are given.
Students were provided 47 valid metaphors on the concept of NGOs.The most frequent metaphors were: social sensitivity (18), help (15), social order (15), solidarity (13), social awareness (12), responsibility (10) and sense of unity in society (10).The least frequent metaphors were: angel, power and vessels which was represented by one teacher candidate.The metaphors of the teacher candidates on NGOs are classified under three categories, which were: society based NGOs metaphors, values based NGOs metaphors and other metaphors.These categories are demonstrated in Table 3.
Table 1 shows that the participants have developed NGO-related metaphors which are classified into three categories, namely society, values and other.Of these three categories, the most commonly reported is the category of society (38,31%) followed by the category of others (34,86%) and others (26,81%).Table 3 indicates society-based NGOs metaphors.
Under the "society-based NGOs metaphors" category 100 teacher candidates created 11 following metaphors: social sensitivity (18), social order (15), social awareness (12), sense of unity in society (10), social solidarity (9), voice of society (9), basis of society (8), helper of needy in the community (6), lifeblood of society (5), social guide (4) and social peace (4).Explanations of the three most used metaphors under this category which are social sensitivity, social order and social awareness respectively are: "NGOs are similar to social sensitivity.If you are disturbed by environmental pollution, if you could not sleep due to ill people or the poor, if you are happy to help children who could not go to school due to financial problems, then it means that for you society rather than yourself is the center of life.For me, each citizen should have the quality of social sensitivity.Sensitive citizens voluntarily take part in activities of NGOs to solve the problems of other people.Therefore, NGOs mean social sensitivity.""NGOs are similar to social order.Because being an NGO member is the only way to seek justice and to have legal power in democratic societies.Reacting against an improper practice legally through NGOs is a democratic right.""NGOs are similar to social awareness.Because states cannot cope with everything themselves.NGOs make people happy and comfortable through their educational activities, economic activities and other activities.For instance, against improper practices of the state, NGOs may react to these.NGOs try to develop an awareness and consciousness to improve society among individuals." Table 4 indicates the value-based NGO metaphors developed by the participants.Under the "values-based NGOs metaphors" category, 70 teacher candidates created 12 following metaphors: help (15), solidarity (13), responsibility (10), goodness (8), sensitivity (6), awareness (4), socialization (3), sharing (3), respect (2), fairness (2), devotion (2) and self-reliance (2).Explanations of the three most used metaphors under this category which are help, solidarity and responsibility respectively are: "NGOs are similar to help.Because most the NGOs are based on the principle of voluntarism.These organizations are composed of individuals who want to help, make solidarity and be useful to others in society.In Turkey, NGOs such as TEGV and TOBB are important organizations for students.""NGOs are similar to solidarity.Because the spirit of NGOs is solidarity.It is blankets and tents in earthquakes.They may find blood needed and help poor students.They support poor and ill people.Thus, NGOs are solidarity.""NGOs are similar to responsibility.Because each citizen should assume responsibility in solving social problems.At least, they should feel responsibility in this regard.They can achieve it through coming together with other people with the same goal." Table 5 indicates the other metaphors developed by the participants.Under the "other metaphors" category, 90 teacher candidates created 24 following metaphors: History (9), family (8), sun (6), mine (6), roots of the tree (6), need (5), sharing chain (5), inheritance (5), sycamore (4), life (4), lifting (3), one who extends hand (3), quality of life (3), book (3), good tree (3), humanity (3), home (2), hope (2), future (2), conscience (2), lantern (2), power (1), vessels (1) and angel (1).Explanations of the three most used metaphors under this category which are history, family, sun respectively are: "NGOs are like history.Because the common point in all Turkish states are the foundations.Throughout the history, a problem of anybody has been regarded as a common problem.Therefore, foundations were established to help others and to solve problems."(34,48%).It was also found that the participants developed numerous metaphors about NGOs.The reason for such a high number of NGO metaphors can be that these organizations require many definitions and perspectives.It may also reflect multi-dimensional structure and various activities of NGOs.At the same time, it may also reflect the fact that the participants have different perspectives about NGOs.In the study, it was also found that less participants were the members of NGOs (14%).Of them, only half were active members.Therefore, teacher canditates should be encouraged to get involved in the activities of NGOs.
As stated earlier, the most commonly reported NGO metaphor category is society based NGOs metaphors (38,46%), followed by value-based NGOs metaphors (34,62%) and other metaphors (26,92%).Within the society based NGOs category, there were eleven metaphors and the most frequent ones were social sensitivity, social order and social awareness.Boydak-Ozen et al. (2015) stated in their study that teachers' views about NGOs are mainly focused on social awereness, too.Therefore it can be said that these results are cohorent.

Table 1 .
Personal characteristics of participants.
number of the participants were 260.Presents the personal characteristics of the participants.As can be seen in Table1of the participants, 109 were male and 151 were female.Of them, 136 attended the elementary school teaching department, 64 attended social studies teaching department and 60 were attending preschool teaching department.It was found that a few pre-service teachers were members ofNGO (38, 14%

Table 2 .
Amount of students and percentages representing the teacher candidates' metaphors on "NGOs" (by frequency).
"NGOs are like a family.Because NGOs help every needy person and make them feel like they live in a

Table 2 .
Categories of metaphors by the teacher candidates' on the concept of "NGOs".

Table 5 .
Other metaphors.NGOs are like the sun.Because the world cannot be brighten without the sun.In the night, the world becomes darker but the sun brightens it.Similarly, NGOs warm people and allow individuals to have a common goal.""NGOs are like vessels.Because they are going through Turkey's heart.Given that NGOs are based on the principle of volunteerism and consist of individuals with a common goal, NGOs have vital importance for society.If we are aware of the significance of the activities of NGOs and make students acquired this information, I think we can produce future active members for NGOs.Like vessels, we may use these ways to be active in NGOs."DISCUSSIONSAccording to the results, students have provided 47 valid metaphors on the concept of NGOs.The most frequent metaphors are: social sensitivity (18), help (15), social order (15), solidarity (13), social awareness (12), responsibility (10) and sense of unity in society (10).The least frequent metaphors are: angel, power and vessels which are represented by one teacher candidate.The metaphors of the teacher candidates on NGOs are classified under three categories, which are: society based NGOs metaphors, values based NGOs metaphors and other metaphors.Of these three categories, the most commonly reported are the category of society (38,31%) followed by the category of values (26,81%) and others