What Does Culture of Higher Education Mean for Teacher Candidates?

Abstract

When a university is considered as an organization, the meaning of culture to students should be investigated to have knowledge of its organizational culture. In this qualitative study, it is aimed to examine university students' perceptions of higher education culture via metaphors. Participants were 230 primary school teacher candidates enrolled in Faculty of Education, Ege University in Turkey. Researchers prepared a form to use as data gathering tool including the prompt “Higher education culture is like ... because ...”. In the study, the 5 common metaphors generated by four grades and these metaphors were freedom, youth, library, sea, and sun. Moreover, all participants generated 101 original metaphors. At the end of the analysis, metaphors were grouped into seven different categories; information environment, shaping the future, pathfinder, free, perpetual adapting itself, multi-cultural, exciting. To conclude, it could be said that most of teacher candidates have a positive perception about higher education.