The purpose of the educational supervision is to improve the educational process, to avoid deviations from organizational goals, and to correct the mistakes and imperfections in organizational action. In Turkey, it is the role of ministry supervisors in city centers, and education supervisors in each province to get feedback of the problems related to the new system of education and fulfill an effective guidance and supervision of teachers and administrators with a specific purpose to develop and update the education system (Azboz 2001, 33).

The place, position, task and roles of the supervision profession have been discussed for many years.  In educational organizations, the tasks of supervisors include study and research, institution and course supervision, guidance-vocational assistance and training, as well as the investigation (Bilir, 1991). The roles of the inspectors are also management, leadership, trainer, guidance, research expertise and judges query (Taymaz, 1997). This conflict of supervisors’ task areas and roles causes supervisors and audities to perceive supervision differently, so different positive and negative perceptions emerge towards to supervisors in society.

Due to their important role, several studies have been conducted on such various issues as how supervisors are perceived by others, their work about their profession, their views of other trainers or of various educational issues, and their organizational attitude.

There are lots of studies in different fields dealing with metaphors which are the subject of this study (Aldemir & Sezer 2009; Aydın, 2006; Aydın & Ünaldı, 2010; Cerit, 2008; Cornelissen and et al., 2008; Çelikten, 2006; Gillis & Johnson, 2002; Heywood and et al., 2002; Randall and et al., 2005; Saban, Koçbeker & Saban, 2006; Saban, 2008; Saban, 2004; Saban, 2009; Steger, 2007; Ünal and et al., 2010; Yılmaz, 2007; Yücel & Koçak, 2008). However, there are few studies on the metaphorical perception of education supervisors (Döş, 2010; Töremen & Döş, 2009; Ünal, 2010).

In this study, the metaphorical perceptions of both teacher candidates and trainee teachers who have never met education supervisors before, but have a perception about supervisors  only with a word of mouth and teachers and school administrators  who were supervised and came across education supervisors in professional settings were obtained. Besides, education supervisors were asked their opinions about the perceptions of the concept of ‘supervisor’ and their opinions were gathered by means of metaphors again.   

Metaphor is a way of referring something to a different thing and defining by acting from a thing that has the similar characteristics (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 2004). It means converting an information one form to another (Koro-Ljungberg, 2001). Metaphor  is also a way of thinking and vision to summarize how people perceive the world (Prawat, 1999), how they understand the world (Morgan, 1998). People use metaphors in the situations when they don’t know anything or have little information about the concept and the terminology dealing with the subject they want to explain. Because metaphors explain what is unknown by known idioms (Lakoff and Johnson, 2005).

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