Author(s): Meliha R. ŞİMŞEK, Esin DÜNDAR
Although metaphors are generally regarded as a literary device, they can be used in educational research as a data collection tool for exploring their writers’ innermost opinions about a given construct. In this study, 119 seventh-graders wrote a metaphor describing their local English coursebook and 100 metaphors were subjected to content analysis within McGrath’s (2006a) framework. While the resource (39%), boredom (16%) and guidance (14%) themes comprised major categories, the themes of entertainment with source of anxiety and fear emerged as equally-weighted categories (10%) from the metaphor analysis. The themes of worthlessness (4%), constraint (3%), support (3%), and authority (1%) became the least-cited groups. As 52% of the metaphors reflected the material’s deficiencies as to content, design and learner expectations, it can be concluded that the majority had a negative attitude towards the textbook, and 48% seemed satisfied with the amount of information and fun it supplied.
The Journal of International Social Research received 8982 citations as per Google Scholar report
