Early Childhood Teachers' Perception of Picture Books Using Metaphor Analysis

The purpose of this study is to investigate how early childhood teachers perceive picture books, which are books that young children encounter for the first time in their lives, and which early childhood teachers often use as teaching materials. To this end, from April 15 to April 30, 223 early childhood teachers collected metaphorical expressions for picture books through an open questionnaire, and categorized and quantified them according to the metaphor analysis procedure. As a result of the analysis, the level of perception of early childhood teachers were shown to be high in the order of instrumental means of picture books, the value of picture books, and the educational effect areas of picture books. There are a total of 12 subcategories, which were derived from imagination, fun and emotion, artistic beauty, expression of various works of art, language ability, life lessons, attention-focusing, improvement, indirect experience, attention-focusing media, play and activity materials, communication tools, and life guidance. Through this result, it was confirmed that early childhood teachers use picture books a lot as 'play and activity materials', and they use picture books a lot as a teaching medium to recognize them as instrumental means. They responded that the reason why early childhood teachers use picture books a lot as a teaching material is that they are easy to use as activity materials and that children pay attention to them. This suggests the need for various support and teacher education to help people consider the content and value of picture books important and understand that they are artistic literary works.