Abstract
PERCEPTİONS OF 4TH – 12TH GRADE STUDENT’S ABOUT MATHEMATICS: A METAPHORICAL APPROACH (EXAMPLE OF GIRESUN PROVINCE)
This study aims to discover the students’ perception towards mathematics class, which is one of the hardest and least favored to learn classes for the students, and towards the instructors and exams of mathematics with the help of the metaphors they created. This is a case study of qualitative research in this context. This research was conducted to 349 students selected from various schools in Giresun Province to ensure diversity in the findings of the research.
Data were collected by Mathematics Metaphor Collection Form (MMTF) developed by the author and Mathematics Attitude Scale by Ministry of National Education. Data collection tool is constructed from 3 chapters. the 1st chapter includes questions about personal information of the students such as gender, grade and school; 2nd chapter includes questions about the created metaphor and reasons in 3 titles (mathematics class, instructor and exams), and 3rd chapter includes the mathematics attitude scale. The data were analyzed with content analysis as a method of qualitative analysis. a frequency analysis was applied, as well. The author classified the metaphors of the students who were grouped like “high, medium and low level attitude” according to data of attitude scale, to positive, negative and neutral, and categorized the created metaphors into 8 groups: human-animal, objects, plants, food-drinks, abstract concept, activity, nature and other.
It is observed that the metaphors created by students shifts from positive to negative from low grades to high grades and there are differences as regards to school types (It is understood that positive metaphor and high level attitude lessen while negative metaphor and low level attitude increase from primary education institutions to academic education institutions.)
Keywords
Mathematics,, metaphor, student metaphors, mathematics metaphors
