A Metaphor Analysis of Teachers' Perceptions of Students With Learning Disabilities

Abstract

This study will attempt to demonstrate that the metaphors produced by teachers working with students with Learning Disability (LD) give clues about the teachers' relationship with such students. Therefore, this research will investigate primary school teachers' perceptions of students with LD using a metaphor analysis. In order to attain this general aim, the following questions are addressed; 1. What metaphors do the teachers use to describe the concept of the student with LD? 2. How are the conceptual categories distributed in terms of the teachers' gender? It was conducted in the 2007-2008 academic year with 171 primary school teachers in Eskisehir, Turkey. In order to reveal the participant teachers' perceptions of the students with LD, they were asked to complete the sentence "Children with LD are like ........ because ........ " The 106 metaphors obtained and those were grouped into eight conceptual categories.