Abstract:

The aim of this research is to expose metaphoric perceptions of the 3rd class students at a primary college in the city center of Mersin regarding the concept of the technology. The study sample was composed of 228 third graders in 3 primary colleges in the center of Mersin during the 2013-2014 academic year. To find out the metaphorical perception of the students regarding the concept of technology, a form was delivered to every student. To collect the study data, each participant was asked to complete the prompt ’’ Technology is like…. because……’’ In so doing the metaphors with regard to technology were desired to be revealed. In this study, the students were given the phrase ‘’ because…’’ so that they can express an explanatory reason. Besides, they were asked to draw a picture relating the metaphor they had used. The pictures and forms the students used were used as primary source of data in this study. Descriptive research was used to depict the overall situation. For the collection and the analysis of the data, the qualitative approach was preferred. The content analysis, a model within the paradigm of the qualitative research, was used during the analysis. The qualitative data collection methods were used. For the data analysis, the content analysis was used. After the data analysis, it was observed that the students generated 95 metaphors. These metaphors were grouped into 8 different categories. It was found out that for the primary 3rd class students who are in college schools, the technology is mostly ‘’ a game’’ but ‘’search tool’’ is at least. The category named “technology that informs” has the highest entries with 54 per cent in the frequency distribution. According to the findings from the study, the perception of the 3rd graders regarding technology should be studies in the light of some variables such as gender, socio-economic level, etc.

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