The Collective Construction of Teacher Identity on X on November 24th, Teachers' Day, and the Meanings Attributed to Teaching

The teaching profession in Türkiye has been assigned significant responsibilities, accompanied by a historical background. However, the profession's own challenges and its frequent presence in certain social debates create an ambiguous situation regarding its prestige. This study presents a perspective on this issue by examining the collective construction of the teaching identity on Twitter as a discursive tool and how it is positioned through political, religious, secular, and national identities. In parallel, the use of history as a tool for legitimization is evaluated in a separate section. To make the collective construction of the teaching profession more comprehensible, the metaphorical meanings attributed to teaching have been identified and analyzed. Designed as a "case study," this research employs the "document analysis" method as a data collection tool. In this context, 42,403 tweets posted on November 24th, Teachers' Day, in 2020 and 2021 were downloaded using Maxqda 12. The sub-problems of the study were determined based on the most frequently repeated meaningful words (see Figure 2) within the downloaded tweets. The data were analyzed using content and descriptive analysis methods. To identify the discourses subjected to content and descriptive analysis, a set of key terms (see Figure 1) was utilized. The findings indicate that the metaphorical meanings attributed to teaching are overwhelmingly positive. In the context of collective identities, teaching is primarily positioned through political identity as a claim for rights. It has been observed that religious and secular identities exist in a mild tension, while national identity maintains a balance between the two. Additionally, history has been used as a tool for legitimization, albeit in a limited manner, through historical periods and figures. Within this framework, it can be argued that the teaching profession in Türkiye has been significantly instrumentalized.