Metaphor analysis of early childhood teachers' rights for children

The purpose of this study is to analyze the metaphors of children's rights of early childhood teachers and examine their awareness and values of children's rights. To this end, from the first week of March 2024 to the fourth week of April 2024, we collected and analyzed metaphors of children's rights through an open-ended questionnaire targeting 190 early childhood teachers living in G City and G Province for approximately two months. The results of the study are as follows. First, from the adult's perspective, children's rights were expressed as ‘children's lives themselves’ and ‘our collective efforts’. Second, from the perspective of viewing children, they were expressed as ‘children as rights holders’ and ‘children as socially vulnerable’. Finally, from the teacher's perspective, they were expressed as ‘teachers as duty-bearers’ and ‘teachers who must make social efforts’, and were classified into three categories in total. Through this study, we examined early childhood teachers' awareness of children's rights and suggested implications for the direction of desirable implementation of children's rights.