Metaphor analysis of university lecturers perceptions of generation Z concept: The case of Artvin Çoruh University

Generation Z, which is generally used to refer to those born after the year 2000, makes up 32% of the world today, and a significant portion of this population continues their education at universities. Since Generation Z spends most of their time in educational institutions, the people with the most experience with them are teachers, administrators, and other service personnel working there. How teachers and other teaching staff, who shape the future, perceive young people affects the quality of education and training and their behavior towards young people. This picture has been the main motivation for this study, which aims to determine university lecturers' perceptions of the concept of Generation Z through metaphors. In the metaphor form, the instructors were asked to complete the sentence "Generation Z is like...because...". The answers given by the participants were analyzed by content analysis method and 126 metaphors were classified into 10 different categories. It was observed that the participants frequently expressed Generation Z with technology-related metaphors, and the metaphors developed by the participants were concentrated in the categories of "A Technological Generation Suitable for the Age in Which It Grew Up", "A Generation Loving Freedom, Against Rules and Innovative", "A Generation Whose Current Situation and Future State is Uncertain, Complex, and Full of Surprises". Although there are metaphors emphasizing the positive aspects of Generation Z, it has been determined that there are more lecturers who emphasize the uncertainty of Generation Z, who are neutral towards Generation Z, or who explain Generation Z with completely negative metaphors, and as the age of the lecturers increases, their hopes and expectations for the future from Generation Z decrease.