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‘An academic is like a bad dinner guest.’ Exploring cross-cultural perspectives of academics via metaphors
Higher Education Research & Development ( IF 2.849 ) Pub Date : 2021-02-22 , DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2021.1887096
Melih Sever 1 , Seyhan Ozdemir 2 , Kate Jobson 3
Affiliation  

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to explore and analyze metaphors constructed around academics, in both the contexts of the UK and Turkey, to see if general opinion on academics seems to be shifting from the well-known ‘ivory-tower’ reputation, and if the perception differs amongst sub-groups based on their varying amounts of exposure to the reality of academia. For each country, three sample groups were asked to think of a metaphor about academics: current students; people who have never attended university; and academics themselves. In total, 642 metaphors were collected: 282 from the UK, and 360 from Turkey. For each category there was some cross-over in metaphor construction present in both contexts, but patterns of divergence in perspectives of academics for each country also became clear during the data analysis phase. The metaphors put forward by academics from both countries were broadly similar, focusing on themes of guidance, versatility and inquiry. The emergent ideas from people without a university background were that academics are egotistical, unreliable and removed from reality, whilst for students the recurrent themes were that of academics as information sources, navigators and inaccessible to them in both contexts. In terms of differences the metaphors solicited from students categorized the role of academics as protector, in the Turkish context, and privileged/enquirer, in the UK context. Academics from the UK drew more negative metaphors about the profession than their Turkish counterparts, although they also adopted a wider definition of their role in terms of directing/influencing society through science. Amongst the non-university-educated group, the metaphors can be roughly dichotomized as presenting academics as interested-curious, in the Turkish case, vs. philosopher, for the UK context. Suggestions and limitations are discussed.



中文翻译:

“一个学者就像一个糟糕的晚餐客人。” 通过隐喻探索学者的跨文化视角

摘要

本研究的目的是探索和分析在英国和土耳其的背景下围绕学者构建的隐喻,以了解对学者的普遍看法是否似乎正在从众所周知的“象牙塔”声誉转变,以及是否基于他们对学术界现实的接触程度不同,不同子群体的看法也有所不同。对于每个国家,三个样本组被要求思考一个关于学术的隐喻:在校学生;从未上过大学的人;和学者自己。总共收集了 642 个隐喻:282 个来自英国,360 个来自土耳其。对于每个类别,在两种情况下都存在隐喻结构的一些交叉,但在数据分析阶段,每个国家的学者观点的分歧模式也变得清晰起来。两国学者提出的比喻大体相似,都集中在指导性、多功能性和探究性等主题上。没有大学背景的人涌现出的想法是,学者是自负的、不可靠的和脱离现实的,而对于学生来说,反复出现的主题是学者作为信息来源、导航者并且在这两种情况下都无法访问。在差异方面,从学生那里征集的隐喻将学者的角色分类为土耳其语境中的保护者和英国语境中的特权/询问者。与土耳其同行相比,英国学者对该专业的负面比喻更多,尽管他们在通过科学指导/影响社会方面也采用了更广泛的定义。在未受过大学教育的群体中,这些隐喻可以粗略地分为两部分,即在土耳其的情况下,学者们对英国的情况表示感兴趣-好奇,而在英国的情况下则表示哲学家。讨论了建议和限制。

更新日期:2021-02-22
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