Guest or Brother? Turkish Language Teachers’ Metaphorical Narratives About Syrian Refugees

This study aims to examine the metaphorical perceptions of Turkish language teachers working in Türkiye toward Syrian refugee students. While language education plays a critical role in refugees’ social integration process, teachers’ perceptions of refugee students directly affect the success of this process. However, there are limited studies in Türkiye on the metaphorical perceptions held by teachers working with refugee students. A qualitative research method was adopted in the study, and metaphor analysis was employed. A total of 128 Turkish language teachers working within the scope of the Project for Supporting the Integration of Syrian Children into the Turkish Education System (PIKTES) participated in the research. Participants produced metaphors by completing the open-ended prompt, “Syrian refugee students are like … because ….” Through content analysis, these metaphors were coded and classified into three main categories: positive, negative, and neutral. The findings indicated that 74.22% of the teachers described refugee students through negative metaphors (e.g., “a bird with a broken wing,”“a flower torn from its branch”). While positive metaphors (19.53%) described refugees as potentially valuable individuals through expressions such as “sibling,”“young tree,” and “jewel,” neutral metaphors (6.25%) reflected an ambiguous perception through expressions such as “guest” and “rain.” Negative metaphors reveal that the integration of refugee students is largely perceived by teachers as problematic and challenging. The findings show that teachers’ perceptions play a critical role in the integration of refugee students into the education system and that current educational policies are insufficient, from the teachers’ perspective, in supporting this integration process. The study emphasizes the need to develop in-service training programs, increase cultural awareness efforts, and establish educational policies that encourage interaction between teachers and refugee students in order to improve teachers’ perceptions of refugee students. The findings contribute to both theoretical and applied studies in the field of refugee education and offer concrete recommendations for the development of teacher training programs.