Abstract:

The current study aimed to examine secondary school student’s perceptions about scientists using metaphors. A total of 220 students from 6th and 8th grades of a secondary school in one of the central districts of Ankara province participated in the study. All students attending the specified classes took part in the study, therefore no sampling was required. The study was conducted in the fall semester of 2012-2013 academic year. Metaphor technique was utilized in the study to identify student perceptions regarding scientists and students were asked to fill in the blanks provided in the following sentence: “A scientist is like a……because………”.  Data obtained from the study were coded by three coders and interrater reliability was found to be 0,94, 0,95 and 0,97. At the end of the study a conceptual framework composed of 3 main categories, 6 sub categories and 23 codes representing student perceptions was obtained. Conceptual framework pointed to the fact that student perceptions regarding scientists had a highly complex structure. The conceptual framework is expected to direct future studies in the field in analyzing and interpreting student perceptions. Based on the findings, it is identified that metaphors can be used as alternative data collection tools in identifying student perceptions of scientists. 

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