Examination of metaphorical perceptions of middle school students towards face-to-face and remote mathematics education during the pandemic period

The aim of this research is to determine the metaphorical perceptions of middle school students in face-to-face and remote education and mathematics. In the study, phenomenology (fact science) pattern was used from models in qualitative research. The study group consists of 300 students who were educated in 4 different middle schools in Gaziantep Şehitkâmil district in the 2020-2021 academic year. When determining the working group, the appropriate sampling method was selected in terms of cost, time and transportation economics. The data collection tool used to determine the metaphorical perceptions of students was developed by the researcher. There are 2 questions in the data collection tool. The answers given by the students were evaluated and interpreted by content analysis. According to the findings, 14 different categories for face-to-face mathematics education and 18 different categories for remote mathematics education were determined. Among the categories for face-to-face mathematics education, the highest frequency categories were "entertainment" and "comfort", while the categories for remote mathematics education had the highest frequency categories of "challenging" and "boring". In addition, the most repeated metaphor for face-to-face mathematics was the metaphor of "football", the most repeated metaphor for the remote mathematics course was the "bowling ball" metaphor. As a result of the research, it was seen that middle school students stated face-to-face mathematics lessons with more positive categories and remote education mathematics lessons with more negative categories.