Metaphors and their justifications about mathematics by secondary school students

This study aims to provide a perspective to explain secondary school students' (between 11-14 ages) metaphors about mathematics and how they justify them. This study is considered to be important in terms of understanding the feelings and thoughts of secondary school students through metaphors and justifications they put forward about mathematics. Data were collected using an open-ended questionnaire. Participants were asked to fill out a 10-question open-ended questionnaire asking them to express mathematical concepts metaphorically and to justify the metaphors they used. The data obtained were analyzed with using conventional inferential satistical techniques. The metaphors, their justifications and statistical findings relevant to them have been described, interpreted, and explained in accordance with word and reason analysis. The results of the research show the diversity of metaphors used by students for mathematics concepts. Students expressed mathematics course with 1454 different metaphors such as sun, journey, ball of string, language. For example, students who define mathematics as a key think that having the potential to open many doors in life can be achieved by having mathematical knowledge. The study also revealed the reasons behind students' use of metaphors. For example, students who perceive mathematics as a journey think that the process of learning mathematics is similar to the process of planning and goal setting in a journey. In addition to these results, it was observed that students' number of words used in metaphor definitions and justifications differed significantly according to grade level. However, there is no significant difference between females and males.