Metaphorical Perceptions of Gifted Students towards Mathematics and Science Concepts

Background / purpose – Understanding gifted students’ perceptions by means of metaphors, carefully examining and interpreting them may help to guide the organization of training programs and the differentiation of educational content for gifted students. This study aims to reveal the perceptions of gifted students regarding science and mathematics concepts as well school math, school science, scientist, experiments, and problem-solving perceptions by examining students’ metaphors. Materials / methods – 30 gifted students studying at a children’s university, which was established by a foundation university in Istanbul, Turkey, were selected as the study’s participants based on convenience, criterion, and accessibility sampling methods. To reveal the students’ metaphorical perceptions, gifted students were asked about their metaphors for “mathematics,” “science,” “mathematics lessons at school,” and “science lessons at school.” Data were collected using a Metaphorical Perception Form, and then transferred to the QDA Mine Lite program for qualitative data analysis, which included coding and the creation of categories and themes. Results –Metaphors about mathematics, Metaphors about school mathematics, Metaphors about science, and Metaphors about school science were obtained as the themes of the study. Conclusion – In a general sense, three categories of findings were obtained across all four themes. For metaphors about mathematics, the categories were “favorable,” “relating,” and “difficulty level”; whilst for school mathematics they were “favorable,” “relating,” and “unfavorable”; for science they were “favorable,” “relating,” and “difficulty level”; and for school science they were “favorable,” “relating,” and “unfavorable.”