Gifted students’ perceptions about intelligence: A metaphor study

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate gifted students’ perceptions about intelligence. Thestudy was conducted with a total of 103 students, 38 females and 65 males, attending a science and artcenter in Ankara. The data were collected through metaphors from the gifted students. The students weregiven a form prepared by the researchers, and they were asked to complete the form including theexpression “Intelligence is like……. because……….”. As a result of the study, 68 valid metaphors related tothe concept of intelligence were obtained. The metaphors produced were grouped under eight conceptualthemes: “Changeable and Incremental, Tool functioning, Can be used for good or evil, Valuable, Associatedwith strong memory, Can be different from person to person, Unlimited, To be discovered” in terms oftheir common characteristics. As a result of the study, it is concluded that gifted students perceiveintelligence at most as “money” and “galaxy” and generally have the perception of incrementalintelligence.