The children's perceptions of the teacher: an analysis of the drawings created by the children

Abstract

This study aims to determine how 66 and 68 months old children in the first grade of primary school perceive their teachers by their drawings. The study was carried out during the spring semester of 2015-2016 academic year. The research was based on the phenomenological design, a qualitative research method. Cluster sampling method, which is a randomization based sampling method, was used in this study. The research sample was composed of 152 first graders (80 boys and 72 girls) in Bornova, Izmir. The children were asked to draw the teacher in their imagination during one class period (40 minutes) while their teachers were present in the classroom. After the drawings completed, each student told the researcher what they drew. Drawings obtained within the scope of the study have been analyzed with Teacher Perception Coding List developed by Aykaç (2012). Most of the children illustrated their teachers as female, cheerful, clean and well-groomed. Besides, the children’s gender did not make any significant differences in their teacher perception.