High school students conceptions about learning and instruction: A metaphor analysis

Gokhan Bas,Zafer Savas Kıvılcım

doi:10.33902/jpr.2020064182

Abstract

In this study, we aimed to investigate the metaphorical conceptions of high school students in Turkey about “learning” and “instruction”. For the selection of the participants, stratified sampling, one of the purposive sampling methods, was adopted. The participating students completed the prompts –which were also the data collection instruments– “learning is like… because…” and “instruction is like… because…” to indicate their conceptualizations about learning and instruction. The data were analyzed using content analysis technique. In order to ensure the validity of the study, the data analysis process was described in detail, the findings were presented without any comment on, and an expert’s opinion was received to confirm whether metaphors under conceptual categories were represented in conceptual category. To ensure the reliability of the findings, a colleague was asked to match sample metaphorical images with the conceptual categories. The results of the study showed that high school students developed a total of 71 valid metaphors clustered under totally nine (five for learning theme and four for instruction theme) main conceptual categories.

Highlights

Over the past two decades, researchers have been increasingly interested in metaphor research in order to better understand the conceptualizations such as education, school, curriculum, learning, instruction, and teacher created by teachers and students (Mahlios, Massengill-Shaw, & Barry, 2010)
Out of 71 metaphors produced in the study, 40 metaphors were generated by only female students, whereas 31 metaphors were formulated only by male students
We investigated the metaphorical conceptions of high school students about learning and instruction

Summary

Introduction

Over the past two decades, researchers have been increasingly interested in metaphor research in order to better understand the conceptualizations such as education, school, curriculum, learning, instruction, and teacher created by teachers and students (Mahlios, Massengill-Shaw, & Barry, 2010). There seems to be a growing body of literature in order to understand such concepts as education, school, curriculum, learning, instruction, student, and teacher (e.g., Anglin & Dugan, 1982; Aykaç & Çelik, 2014; Eren & Tekinarslan, 2013; Gültekin, 2013; Martinez, Sauleda, & Huber, 2001; Saban, 2003, 2006, 2013; Saban, Koçbeker, & Saban, 2006, 2007; Shaw, Barry, & Mahlios, 2008), the related research is seen to be conducted more on in-service or pre-service teachers on how they conceptualize such metaphorical images.

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