Metaphors of elementary school students related to the lesson and teachers of religious culture and moral knowledge

Abstract

This study seeks to investigate the perceptions of elementary school 4th grade stu-dents related to the lesson and teachers of religious culture and moral knowledge via meta-phors. In this study, the phenomenological design, one of the qualitative research designs, was used. Data was analysed through content analysis, and the study group was comprised of 234 elementary school 4th grade students. The sampling of the study was determined through criterion sampling, which is one of the purposeful samplings. The data of the study were collected via a semi-structured form composed of two questions asked as "Religious culture and moral knowledge lesson is like ... because ..." and "Religious culture and moral knowledge teacher is like ... because ...". The analysis of metaphors was conducted consider-ing the stages including data encoding and extraction, the compilation of sample metaphor image, the development of themes/categories, the configuration of data based on codes and themes, the reliability and validity analyses of data, carrying out quantitative data entries and analyses and interpreting findings of the study. Considering the results of the study as a whole, it was determined that the metaphors developed by elementary school 4th grade stu-dents were largely positive related to the lesson and teachers of religious culture and moral knowledge.