Pre-service primary school teachers’ metaphoric perceptions about geometry

Abstract

Abstract: Geometry can be defined as finding patterns and standard principles within and between the shapes, which contributes to learning of mathematics. This study aims at revealing the perceptions of pre-service primary school teachers on the geometry concept using metaphors. For this purpose, pre-service teachers were asked to fill in the blanks in a sentence, which was “Geometry is like/similar to…, because…”. The study was conducted with 120 voluntary preservice primary school teachers. Then, the metaphors they used were analyzed in three phases, consisting of determining the subject (1) and source (2) of the metaphor, and evaluating the relationship (3) between the source and subject. The responses of the participants were evaluated by the researchers, whose reliability was obtained as 97% using the reliability formula provided by Miles and Huberman (1994). The most commonly used metaphors were “puzzle” and “space” among the total 71 different metaphors generated by the pre-service teachers. These metaphors were classified into 11 categories under the titles of “feature” and “feeling”. Results illustrated that pre-service teachers generally reflected geometry as “difficult” and “complex” but “entertaining” involving the relations between part and whole.