Determining Gifted Students’ Nature of Science Images, Creativeness, Nature of Science Metaphors, and Nature of Science Myths through Image Art

The current research aimed to explore gifted students’ perceptions of the nature of science, creativity, metaphors related to the nature of science, and myths about the nature of science through image art. Image art allows students to depict their mental representations of concepts by drawing and making analogies. The study was conducted with 17 gifted students at a school for gifted students in Ankara Province during the 2023–2024 academic year. The research employed a case study design, one of the qualitative research methods. In the data collection process, gifted students were asked to draw “how the scientists construct scientific knowledge” based on image art. The primary data collection tool was “art sheets illustrating how scientists construct scientific knowledge,” created by the gifted students. Descriptive and content analysis techniques were applied to analyze the collected data. At the end of the study, the gifted students' representations of scientific inquiry and scientists were predominantly traditional. The inventiveness of their drawings was average. Also, they had different nature of science metaphors such as “Science is brain.” being the most frequented one. While the students exhibited some myths about the nature of science, they also demonstrated an understanding of certain aspects of it. The importance of the current research was to give an idea to researchers working on gifted students’ nature of science perspectives so that they would be able to construct proper teaching environments.