Middle School Students’ Metaphorical Perceptions of the Concept of Poetry

Abstract

According to the Turkish Language Teaching Program prepared by the Ministry of National Education in Turkey, poetry texts should be included in Turkish textbooks taught in primary and secondary schools. Students encounter poetry texts in reading and writing activities in Turkish textbooks. It is thought that determining how students perceive the type of poetry they encounter in Turkish textbooks is important for Turkish education. The aim of this study is to determine the perceptions of secondary school students about the concept of poetry through metaphors. Since the study aims to determine the perceptions of secondary school students towards the concept of “poetry” and the meanings they attribute to these perceptions, phenomenology design, one of the qualitative research designs, was preferred. The study group consisted of 148 secondary school students studying in a public school. In order to determine the metaphorical perceptions of the participants about the concept of “poetry”, they completed the sentence, “Poetry is like … because …”. The data obtained were analyzed by content analysis method. At this stage, firstly, the invalid ones were eliminated from the data obtained and then these data were coded and divided into eight different categories. Afterwards, the information was presented descriptively in tables. As a result, it was determined that secondary school students’ metaphors related to the concept of “poetry” did not change and differentiate according to the grade level, and it was determined that all of the students attributed positive meanings to poetry. In addition, it was observed that the majority of the students tried to explain the concept of “poetry” with concrete metaphors and attributed very different meanings to “poetry” based on reasoned metaphors. In addition, it has been determined that most of the students see poetry as the interpreter of emotions and the source of life.