Gifted students' metaphorical perceptions of basic science concepts and studying science: Alanya BİLSEM example

This study aims to examine gifted students' metaphorical perceptions of basic science concepts and studying science. The study was carried out with 210 gifted students between the 3rd and 8th grades attending the Alanya Science and Art Center affiliated to the Alanya District National Education Directorate in Antalya, in a 2-week period in the spring term of the 2020-2021 academic year. Phenomenology design, which is one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study since it was aimed to reveal gifted students' metaphorical perceptions of basic science concepts and studying science. "Metaphor Data Collection Form" was used as a data collection tool in the study. The metaphor data collection form includes "the concepts of Universe, Earth, living, life, matter, light, sound, electricity, environment and the subject of studying science". The form includes "Concept name (for example, Earth) is like …………………. Because……………." for each concept separately. Content analysis was used in the analysis of student data. Among the metaphors come up by gifted students about basic science concepts and studying science, the most used metaphor was "infinity" for the concept of "Universe", "ball" for the concept of "Earth", "pen" for the concept of "alive", "plant" for the concept of "life", "human" for the concept of "matter", "Sun" for the concept of "light", "wave" for the concept of "sound", "water" for the concept of "electricity", "home" for the concept of "environment", and "game" for the subject of "studying science". The metaphor study was concluded that gifted students had a highly developed level of thinking about basic science concepts and found the science course enjoyable.