Pre-Service Elementary Mathematics Teachers’ Metaphors on Scientific Research and Foundations of Their Perceptions

In this study, it is aimed to investigate pre-service elementary mathematics teachers’ perceptions about scientific research with metaphor analysis and determine the foundations of these perceptions. This phenomenological study was conducted with 182 participants. The data were collected with two open-ended survey forms formed for investigating the metaphors and their reasons, and the reasons which are important in shaping these perceptions. The data were analysed in descriptive and content analysis methods based on the aim of the study. The findings can be summarised as follow: The participants created 156 metaphors and the most cited metaphor is “universe”. The most distinctive features of the scientific research given by the participants were its hierarchic structure in application, presenting new knowledge and requiring much effort. The least cited feature of the research was its falsibiality. In addition, it was found that though teachers, scientific research methods course and internet are very important in the process of perception creation about scientific research, the experts in the areas have little effect on this process.


Introduction
The scientific research is defined as the process which includes some stages as data collection with systematic processes for certain aims, analysing the data, interpreting the findings and reporting the study findings for readers (McMillan & Schumacher, 2006, pp. 11-12).The scientific research was conducted for different aims such as the desire to study unresolved questions, intellectual happiness, service to the society, gaining prestige (Kothari, 2004, p. 4), presenting the unknown and acknowledging the universe (Goddard & Melville, 2007, pp. 2-3); In the literature, there are a number of features given to this concept.These are as follow: • empiric, systematic, replicable, falsibiality, repeatable, logical (Bhattacherjee, 2012, pp. 3-5;Bless, Higson-Smith & Kagee, 2007, p. 7), • reductive, transmittable (Bless et al., 2007, pp. 8-9), • infinite in other words the starting point of another study (Goddard & Melville, 2007), • parsimony, requiring certain skills, important for the development of science (Bhattacherjee, 2012, p. 5) Scientific research as an engine of the development has gained a great importance for societies in these days.Societies should do scientific research, produce information and follow current development in order to keep pace with scientific development processes.As a result, training individuals who shape the society on information and skills of scientific research concept in education systems is important emphasised.In this context, within the scope of educational programs in Turkey, it is intended to develop students' skills in doing research, producing and using information (MEB, 2013) and with a national ministry of education project competition named "This is My Work", it is intended to help elementary level students' producing projects in Science and Mathematics areas.To create these skills, one should firstly conduct a relevant network about science and the elements of science in students' minds.Although it is said that children's mind on these concepts were shaped in pre-school period (Güler & Akman, 2006), it was found that their mental development on these issues changed in the following ages, too (Buldu, 2006).Considering these facts, there are important duties for teachers to create perceptions about a concrete knowledge about science, scientist, scientific research, etc.Because teacher is the foremost resource in creating these perceptions (Türkmen, 2008) and their attitudes towards science have a significant impact on their students' attitudes (Denessen, Vos, Hasselman, & Louws, 2015;Young, 1998).
Teachers' association with scientific research is much more than guiding their students to gain the concepts about scientific research.From a different perspective, constant scientific research should be conducted in education in order to increase the quality of education.Some part of this research is directly focused on teachers.For instance, 592 research articles about mathematics education published in 44 education journals during 2009-2014 in Turkey were analysed and found that 13% of the articles were directly about teachers (Baş, Sağırlı, & Işık, 2015).
In addition, teachers sometimes become both the researcher and co-organizer in the research process.
In determining teachers' attitudes and behaviours, their experiences in pre-service education period can be accepted as an invaluable resource (Baki & Gökçek, 2007).Agreeing the significant effect of pre-service education on attitudes, many studies dealt pre-service teachers' attitudes towards scientific research in different areas (Bibi, Lqbal, & Majid, 2012;Biçer, Bozkırlı, & Er, 2013;Butt & Shams, 2013;Çelik, Gazioğlu, & Pesen, 2012;Konokman, Tanrıseven, & Karasolak, 2013;Korkmaz, Şahin, & Yeşil, 2011a;Papanastasiou, 2005;Polat, 2014;Yenilmez & Ata, 2012).The relevant studies showed different findings such as pre-service teachers have positive attitudes (Konokman et al., 2013;Korkmaz et al., 2011a), moderate level of attitudes (Biçer et al., 2013;Polat, 2014), neutral attitudes (Yenilmez & Ata, 2012) and negative attitudes (Butt & Shams, 2013).In addition, some of these studies tackled different variables which can be effective on the attitudes and some of these variables and their effects were summarised in Table 1.Table 1 indicates that there are different results about the pre-service teachers' perceptions according to the variables, major, grade level, taking or not taking a course related to scientific research.But there is not any difference in gender.In addition to these attitude studies, Küçükoğlu, Taşgın, and Çelik (2013) investigated pre-service teachers' beliefs about scientific research process and found that teachers think that they do not need to make research but scientific research will be helpful for their professional development.Another important point about the attitudes towards scientific research is the issue of how the scientific research concept is perceived.On this issue, Miller (2004) in the study about civil society reached the finding that though scientific literacy percentage of the society is only %20 of that society, scientific research is highly important for individuals' economic development and life quality.In sum, in order to increase the interest of the individuals in a society, individual should have an appropriate way of thinking, positive attitude and necessary skills for scientific literacy.Therefore, there is a heavy burden for teachers.Another issue, following educational research in their area, adopting the suggested applications in the research and taking an active role in the educational research are necessities for being up-to-date teachers.In this context, teachers' current perceptions related to scientific research have a directional impact over their attitudes.Therefore, teachers' being graduated with true perceptions related to scientific research in their pre-service period before their teaching practices has crucial importance for their following practices.During the literature review process of the study, there could not be reached enough study specifically focusing on the pre-service teachers' perceptions about the concept "scientific research".Considering above issues, this study aims to investigate pre-service elementary mathematics teachers' perceptions about scientific research with metaphor analysis and determine the reasons of these perceptions.With this aim, below research questions were asked.
1) What are the metaphors of pre-service elementary mathematics teachers' perceptions about scientific research?
2) What are the features of scientific research concept given in the pre-service elementary mathematics teachers' metaphors about scientific research?
3) What are the foundations underlying pre-service elementary mathematics teachers' forming perceptions about scientific research?

Method
This study aimed to present pre-service elementary mathematics teachers' perceptions about scientific research and reveal underlying foundations of these perceptions.In accordance with the aim, a phenomenological research method which attempts to reveal in detail how individuals make sense of their experience and how they turn their experience into consciousness (Patton, 2002, p. 104), was adopted in this study to research the study aim.In this revealing processes, metaphor which is much more than a linguistics structure, imbedded in people's daily lives, thinking and actions (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003, p. 4) and also which helps to research a particular phenomenon with an authentic and creative perspective (Carpenter, 2008) was used in the study.

Participants
The participants of the study comprised of 182 pre-service teachers (59 third grade and 123 fourth grade university students) who took education in elementary mathematics teaching department of a Turkish university located in eastern part of Turkey.The participants were chosen with purposeful sampling strategies in two phases.
In the first phase, typical case sampling strategy which aims to collect data by determining a typical sample which is not an extraordinary, but an average part of universe and also gives general information about the entire universe (Patton, 2002, p. 236) was used.Therefore, an average university was selected according to students' entrance scores to the education faculty, numbers of the students and student profiles by considering general universities in Turkey.In the second phase, criterion sampling strategy which aims to determine a certain group in terms of particular features of the researched issue (Patton, 2002, p. 238)

Data Collection Instruments and Procedures
Two data collection instrument were used within the scope of the study.The structure and data collection periods of these instruments can be summarised below.
The data about the first and second problem were gathered with the Determining Metaphors Related to Scientific Research Form.The form has two sections.The first section included the intention of the form with the sentence "In this form, you are asked to write a metaphor that you stimulated much in your life related to scientific research with its reason."In addition, two examples from the literature review in this section to ease students' understanding of metaphor writing and which do not direct students' answers were given.These metaphor examples are as follow: Global warming is like a battle of nature, because it is the struggle of nature against human destruction.
Geography is like a pine-tree, because a pine-tree has always its leaves in all seasons like geography.Geography is always nice and enjoyable.
In the second section, a question "Scientific research is like ….Because …" was given to the students in order to write their stimulations.
After the distribution of the forms, meaning of metaphor and the metaphor examples were explained in detail to students and they were asked to write their metaphors regarding the scientific research.Then they were asked to write firstly their stimulation and in the second sentence to write their reason of their stimulation.In this process, students' influences to each others were prevented.
For the third research question, an open-end question form named "Reasons of Perceptions regarding Scientific Research Questionnaire" was used.In the questionnaire, students were asked to range their preferences about the foundations which played role in their perception creation processes related to scientific research concept by starting from the most to the least effective one.Based on experts' viewpoints, some examples like "teacher, peer, science courses, scientific research methods course, cinemas, TV programmes, course-books, other books, etc." Were presented to the students to clarify what means the foundations in the question.
Later, the form was given to each student and students' influence to each other in answering process was prevented.Lastly, the data taken from these two forms were transferred to computer for the analysis process.

Data Analysis
In the data analysis process, descriptive analysis method to analyse data according to reach certain conceptual structures and content analysis method to reach the relationships and concepts to describe the data (Yıldırım & Şimşek, 2008, pp. 224, 227) were used.In this process, four experts from the qualitative research area and the researcher took part in analysis.In every step, an expert (Expert A) was stabilised and others were changed in

In the first phase:
For the first question "What are the metaphors of pre-service elementary mathematics teachers' perceptions about scientific research?", it was aimed to determine the valid metaphors and their reasons.After the analysis, 7 of 182 metaphors were accepted as invalid one and were not considered for the main analyses.An example of invalid metaphor is below: S67: Scientific research is like a nightmare.Because I did not understand that course, it was a very difficult course and I failed in its final exam.I took some time to pass that course.I did not like the course, too.Reading article is really difficult and understanding how to write an article is much more difficult than reading.That is why I said a nightmare, I was afraid of that course.
In this answer, the participant associated the concept with the scientific research methods course and his/her answer was accepted as an invalid metaphor.Remaining 175 metaphors were given in table with their frequencies.

In the second phase;
For the second question "What are the features of scientific research concept given in the pre-service elementary mathematics teachers' metaphors about scientific research?", it was aimed to analyse the reasons of the metaphors and these reasons in content analysis method.This analysis process took part in four steps as draft code list, final cod list, data analysis and reliability of the analysis.
Preparing draft code list: In this step, the data were read and analysed by the researcher and Expert A. At the end of the step, 40 codes about the reasons about the scientific research were determined.
Preparing final code list: In this step, the draft code list formed and coded by the researcher and Expert A, was analysed with Expert B and C. Based on the literature 39 codes were grouped under 11 categories.The details about these categories and frequencies of each category were given in the findings section.
Data analysis: Based on the final code list, main analysis was conducted by the researcher.A sample of the analysis process is given below.
In the first phase: Determining the valid metaphors In the second phase: Analysing the reasons of the metaphors In the third phase: Determining the foundations in perception creation process.

Researcher
Expert A

Determining Reliability of Analysis
Expert D

Researcher
Expert A

Determining the Foundations
Student 20's reasons for the railway metaphor analysed with two codes.In valid 175 metaphors, it was seen that 3 students associated the scientific research with scientific articles.From the remaining 172 metaphors, 344 codes were developed.
Determining reliability of analysis: In this step, reliability of the analyses was tested.Then, the analyses were investigated by the experts A and D.
Based on the Miles and Huberman (1994), firstly agreement and disagreement on each concept were determined, and later the reliability was calculated with the formula (Reliability =Agreement / (agreement + disagreement) and found as 77.9%.Later, 16.5% of the codes were accepted and 5.5% were refused in the disagreed codes.In qualitative studies being agreement percentage over 70 is enough for the reliability criterion (Miles & Huberman, 1994).The reliable findings were presented in tables and figures with frequencies and percentages.

In the third phase;
For the third question "What are the foundations underlying pre-service elementary mathematics teachers' forming perceptions about scientific research?",students' answers in the second data collection instrument about underlying foundations in the perception creation process were descriptively analysed.In this phase, students wrote totally 924 foundations as follow: 9 participants (2), 17 participants (3), 50 participants (4), 41 participants (5), 25 participants (6), 28 participants (7), 7 participants (8), 2 participants (9), and 3 participants (10).In the analysis process some of the foundations in the example "school" were disregarded as the school can contain some elements from courses, teacher and peer, and it does not emphasizes a certain resource.Then, 78 answers were accepted as invalid and the analysis conducted with 847 answers.From these valid answers 9 categories were created with 40 codes.The findings related to these codes and categories were presented with their frequencies and percentages in tables and graphics.

Findings
This section respectively presented the findings related to three research questions.

Findings of the First Research Question "What Are the Metaphors of Pre-Service Elementary Mathematics Teachers' Perceptions about Scientific Research?"
After the content analysis, 7 metaphors of 182 participants were accepted as invalid and the remaining 175 metaphors accepted as valid metaphors.From the valid metaphors 156 different metaphors were determined and they were shown in the Figure 2

Findings of the First Research Question "What Are the Features of Scientific Research Concept Given in the Pre-Service Elementary Mathematics Teachers' Metaphors about Scientific Research?"
In order to determine the participants' reasons in giving justification their metaphors to the features of scientific research, the data were subjected to content analysis.Analysis findings showed that three participants associated the scientific research concept with the article.The remaining 172 participants' reasons of their metaphors were analysed with 39 codes.344 codings were categorised under 11 categories such as systematic, repeatable, requiring and supporting motivation, having a certain purpose, contributing to human development, falsibiality, unpredictable, infinite in subject areas, necessary for science, constantly changing and cumulative structure in findings.These categories were shown below in Figure 3.

Figure 3. The features of scientific research according to categories
As presented in the Figure 3, contributing to human development" (22%), requiring and supporting motivation (%20) and systematic (18%) are mostly cited features of the scientific research.The least cited ones are necessary for science (3%), constantly changing (3%), unpredictable (%3) and falsibiality (1%).Codes used in categorization and examples to these codes were given below.

Sometimes it yields a very simple fact that we cannot figure out. At that time we wonder why we have not realised so far. Sometimes it yields very interesting results and this really surprises us. … [code: presenting interesting findings]
• Category: Requiring and supporting motivation; Scientific research has two motivational types.The first one is processed based with the features requiring effort (n=27), needing wonder (19) and interest (9); the other one is result-based with the features giving happiness (11), increasing desire to learn (1), giving enjoyment after success (1), gaining positive emotions (1) and increasing self-esteem (1).

S118: In order to move hands, legs, firstly human brain controls nervous systems about these organs and later the movement occurs. In a scientific research firstly a problem is presented, and later it works like nervous system between brain and body parts. [code: conducted by following certain steps]
• Category: Repeatable; Scientific research conducts detailed analysis (n=13); uses valid measurements (n=7), needs accurate research process (n=4), is objective (n=2), contains subjectivity (n=2), uses different data collection instruments (n=2) and can be generalised (n=1),

S86: Photograph does not reflect the reality. Some photographs can be misinterpreted by other and interpretation changes from individual to individual. Though a photograph is single object, it can have very different interpretations according an ivory tower perception.… [code: containing subjectivity]
• Category : Cumulative structure in findings; Scientific research is a starting point of another study (n=13) and has cumulative effect on other studies (n=12),

S133: When we dig a hole, we come across new items. In a scientific research we conduct exploration, each new finding introduces new research topics and this process has no ending. [code: starting point of another study]
• Category: Having a certain purpose; Scientific research aims to produce new things (n=7), ease human life (n=6); understand world (n=5), meet generated needs (n=5), gain respect (n=1),

S119: … When considered the necessities of the life, absent features appear and requirements for life increase. Therefore we need further exploration. … [code: meeting generated needs]
• Category: Infinite in subject areas; Scientific research is limitless (n=16) and has numerous topics (5), S3: Universe is so board that each edge needs exploration.It is limitless.Scientific research is like universe, both of them are limitless.… [code: limitless] • Category: Necessary for science; Scientific research is necessary for science development (n=7) and understanding science (n=4), S145: When scientific research stops, scientific development stops, too.This is like someone who breaks his backbone, loses his flexibility in life.… [code: necessary for science development] • Category: Constantly changing; Scientific research renews itself (n=6) and has continuity (n=3),

S103: … scientific research is like infinite years, it is everlasting. It does not have an end. … [code: continuity]
• Category: Unpredictable; Scientific research has unpredictable outcomes (n=5), can present harmful results (n=3) and is unclear about reaching results (n=2),

S141: … One does not know what s/he will come across. Sometimes one meets a great surprise by finding something unknown and becomes happy. But sometimes it makes unhappy by yielding nothing or any important result. … [code: unpredictable outcomes]
• Category: Falsibiality; Scientific research can yield wrong results (n=4)

S6: … The first finding may be wrong. One reaches the truth with different studies by getting help from false attempts. [code: yielding wrong results]
In addition to general distribution of the categories, distribution of codes were determined and given for more detailed findings in the Figure 4.As seen in the Figure 4, the frequency of codes changed between 1 to 56 and average frequency was approximately found 8.40.The codes having higher frequency rate than the average were as follow: hierarchic structure in application (56), presenting new knowledge (37), requiring much effort ( 27), needing wonder (19), presenting useful results ( 16), being infinite in subject areas ( 16), having detailed analysis (13), being a start point of another study ( 13), having cumulative effect on other studies (12), tasting happiness at the end (11), producing valuable outcomes (10), yielding exact results (10) and requiring interest (9).
In addition to these findings, a detailed table was created according to importance rate of these categories.When considered the frequencies of the codes, 8 highly stated codes in almost each category were determined and the rest 32 codes were given under the category "other codes".The findings were shown in Table 2.According to the importance rate in the table, the most important ones were teachers, scientific research methods course in the curriculum and internet.In addition, course-books in their undergraduate years, peers and TV programmes were also effective in this process.

Conclusion and Discussion
In this present study conducted with 182 participants and aiming to analyse metaphors of pre-service elementary mathematics teachers' perceptions about the scientific research and determine the underlying foundations in the perception creation process, below findings were found.
The participants formed 156 valid metaphors.The most cited metaphor of the participants is the universe which indicates being limitless of scientific research, cumulative structure of the findings of the research and producing new products.In addition to this metaphor, metaphors human and trip were given three participants; mathematics, human brain, tree, ocean, soil, heart, love, sea, baby and detective were given two participants, the remaining 143 metaphors were given once by each participant.Metaphors in this study such as soul, geographical discoveries, teacher, road, rain, mathematics, new born baby, nature, puzzle, cook, past days, snowball (A.Derman & S. Derman, 2015), tree roots, alive, exploration, ladder, journey, path, meal and journey (Şenel & Arslan, 2014) and universe, ladder, food, world, human, sun, tree, sea, sky, ocean, river, life (A.Derman & S. Derman, 2015;Şenel & Aslan, 2014) are similar to other studies conducted with students' metaphors in different majors and also their reasons of their metaphors have similarities.In these studies, the universe is associated with scientific research with its infinite structure.Very little proportion of the participants associated the scientific research with the scientific article.In addition, being close of the valid metaphors (n:175) to the numbers of the participants shows that students have adequate level of perception towards scientific research and numerous metaphors indicate that they have various associations about the structure.
The participants have different associations about scientific research in their minds and their reasons of these associations were categorised under 11 categories.Among these categories contributing to human development is the most cited one.This finding is consistent with the result of Miller (2004) which says that scientific research is important for increasing economic development and quality of life.The other categorised emphasised are requiring and supporting motivation, and its systematic process.This much emphasis on its systematic structure may result from much emphasis on being systematic of scientific research process (e.g.determining problem, hypothesising, etc.) in the scientific research methods course and the resources.Other features stated by the participants are its repeatable, cumulative structure in findings, having a certain purpose and infinite in subject areas.Necessary for science, constantly changing, unpredictable and falsibiality are the least stated features With a more detailed expression, the features of scientific research given by the pre-service teachers are hierarchic structure in application, presenting new knowledge, requiring much effort, needing wonder, presenting useful results, being infinite in subject areas, having detailed analysis, being a start point of another study, having cumulative influence of each study on others, tasting happiness at the end, producing valuable outcomes, yielding exact results and requiring interest.When investigated these features, almost all features given by the participants were cited in the introduction part of this study and the studies of Bless et al. (2007), Bhattacherjee (2012), Goddard and Melville (2007), and Kothari (2004).In addition, in different sections of A. Derman and S. Derman's (2015), and Şenel and Aslan's (2014) studies, similar results about pre-service teachers were given.
Having some similarities of metaphors and their reasons with others can result from the close relationship of science and scientific research.In fact, the science is developed and understood with the results of scientific works, this issue was also stated by some parts of the participants.In the study of Şenel and Aslan (2014), science was associated with a puzzle and scientific study was associated with the pieces of a puzzle in this study.Even this finding is a good example of the relationship between science and scientific study.In addition to these findings, there was not any negative idea about scientific study in the metaphors and given reasons about the associations.
Table 2 indicated that many foundations specifically teachers, scientific research methods courses, peers, TV programmes, course-books, internet, science courses and films have a great impact in pre-service teachers' perception creation process.
It was found that there were 40 effective foundations in the participants' expression about the underlying foundations in the perception creation process and these foundations were categories under 9 categories.The most influential foundations are course, teachers, films and TV programmes and course-books.Other foundations are social environment, computer-internet, faced scientific events and presentations.In this process, the others category which is composed mostly of news and individual observations is the least effective one.With a detailed waypoint, a range can be given according to frequency of expression as follow: teachers, scientific research methods course, peers, TV programmes, course-books, internet, science courses and films.Primary resources in these foundations are teachers, scientific research methods course and internet.This finding is consistent with the finding of Türkmen (2008) which found that teachers are the most effective factor in students' perception creation process towards scientists.In addition, pre-service teachers' placing internet near the top is another important finding.However, other resources placed in after these resources are as follow: course-books in the education, peers and TV programmes.
In sum, this study showed that the participants' had different associations about the scientific research in their minds and there were accurate perceptions regarding scientific research in underlying foundations of the perception creation process.In this perception creation process different resources such as peers and internet were effective in addition to expected resources such as teachers and scientific research methods course.These findings can contribute to pre-service teachers' in other words future teachers' having accurate perception about scientific research or the studies aiming to support perceptions about scientific research.In addition, if one wants to proceed on developing pre-service teachers' perceptions about relevant issues, effective use of internet can be helpful.For instance, pre-service teachers can be guided for visiting scientific contented web-pages like TUBITAK, NCTM etc.
order to gather new viewpoints and keep the older ones.Analyses were conducted in three steps based on the research questions.The content of each step was shown in Figure1.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Data analysis process

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Distribution of the features of scientific research according to codes

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Distribution of underlying foundations in perception creation process

Table 1 .
Variables on pre-service teachers' attitudes, studies and their findings In evolution processes of these studies, high schools in Turkey differ in types as general, Anatolian (schools accepting students with a certain scores after elementary Scholl graduation and foreign language-based ones), Anatolian teacher (schools enriched with the program of training teachers), science (schools accepting students who have high scores and focused mostly teaching mathematics and science courses like physics, chemistry) and vocational high schools (schools focused on training students in vocational areas like electrics, electronics, forging, etc.).Turkish National Ministry of Education put into force some radical changes about high school types after 2013. * was used.Then, the students in the department of Elementary Mathematics Teaching who got training on Scientific Research Methods were determined with this criterion.Scientific Research Method is a course in the mathematics programme serviced in the III.Semester of education period as a two-hour per-week course.The content of the course is as follows: Science and its fundamental concepts (phenomena, knowledge, absolute, true, false, universal knowledge etc.), fundamental details about history of science, structure of scientific research, scientific research methods and different viewpoints about these methods, problem, research design, sample, data collection, data collection methods (quantitative and qualitative), recording data, analysis, discussion and reporting.
below.studying for this exam.S77 associated studying for KPSS with the scientific research as both concepts have achieved by following certain steps and need much effort.

Table 2 .
Importance rate of the underlying foundations in perception creation process