eng Science and Education Publishing American Journal of Educational Research 2327-6150 2018-05-24 6 6 611 616 10.12691/education-6-6-5 EDUCATION2018665 article Dilek Sezgin Memnun Dilek Sezgin Memnun, dsmemnun@uludag.edu.tr 1 Emre Dinç 2 Bünyamin Aydin 3 Faculty of Education, Uludag University, Bursa, Turkey School of Education, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA Faculty of Education, University of Alanya Alaaddin Keykubat University, Antalya, Turkey This research was aimed to indicate how high school students use metaphors to think about math 'functions'. A total of 405 students were asked to complete the phrase, 'Function is like..'. because''' Students were given sheets and asked to write their thoughts while focusing on one metaphor. The data from this research was analyzed through a content analysis method. The metaphors were determined, classified and categorized. A total of 149 valid metaphors were identified and classified under eight different categories. The research results indicated that more than half of the students think that function is a difficult concept, some students found the concepts of polynomial and function similar to each other, and some expressed that they found the subject of function easy and enjoyed solving problems related to functions. http://pubs.sciepub.com/education/6/6/5/education-6-6-5.pdf Mathematics function metaphoric perception high school student