The Determine of Primary School Students’ Perceptions about Concepts like “Science and Science Course” through Metaphors

The aim of this study is to determine the perceptions of 3rd and 4th primary school students regarding the concepts of “science” and “science course” via metaphor. In this study, phenomenological method which is one of the qualitative research techniques was used. The sample of the research consists of 3rd and 4th grade students who are selected by the typical case sampling technique in the fall semester of 2016-2017 academic years in one village, one district and one central primary school which located in Hatay. A total of 470 students (246 female and 224 male) were collected and analyzed. The data for the study were gathered by having the students complete the sentences “Science is like …. Because ….” and “Science course is like … Because …. ”. The data were analyzed and interpreted by content analysis technique. As a result of the research, it was seen that the students produced 103 metaphors about the concept of “science” and 97 metaphors about the concept of “science course”. These metaphors were further identified in 8 different categories for “science” and in 9 different categories for “science course”. In this study, in average, every four students created one different metaphor for these two concepts