Pre-Service Teachers' Conceptual Metaphors about Philosophy Course

The present study aims to reveal the conception of freshmen studying at Amasya University about philosophy course with the help of metaphors. Phenomenological design, which is a kind of qualitative research design, has been used for the study. The study group of the study is 162 freshmen students in the 2013-2014 semester year. Questionnaires were used to make students clarify philosophy course with metaphors. The metaphors related to philosophy were grouped and classified. In the study, content analysis technique was used to evaluate the gathered data. According to findings, the participants produced 35 valid metaphors related to philosophy course. After these metaphors had been analyzed in terms of common traits, they were grouped under five different notional categories. These categories are : “Philosophy as the source of unhappiness”, “Philosophy as the source of epistemology”, “Philosophy as the source of chaos”, “Philosophy as the source of enlightenment”, “Philosophy as the source of abstract thinking”.