The purpose of this research is to determine secondary school students’ perceptions of the concept of “common heritage” through metaphors. Qualitative research method was used in this study. Phenomenology, one of the qualitative research designs, was used. The research was carried out with 296 students studying in 6th and 7th grades in the 2021-2022 academic year in 5 secondary schools in Konya. In order to collect the data related to the research, the first part is the gender information of the students, the second part is “Common heritage is like …..… because …….” A form containing the sentence was used. The collected data were subjected to ‘content analysis’ processes to transform them into meaningful and systematic structures. As a result of the analysis of the research data, it was determined that the students explained the concept of common heritage with 136 metaphors. According to the results of the analysis, the students mostly used books, treasure, tree, rope, water, time, chain, gold, sun, light, diamond, knowledge, building, sea, world, gene, piggy bank, telephone, food, etc. to explain the concept of common heritage. parent, friend, moon, bond, connective, mountain, labor, lantern, lake, internet, pen, culture, ladder, money, stream, memory, antique, mirror, value, flash memory, gift, bridge, jewellery, teacher It has been determined that they use the metaphors of painting, historical artifacts, technology, space and road. Considering the common features of the metaphors expressed by the students, 19 different categories were created. Accordingly, the category common heritage in terms of past and future connection, common heritage in terms of teaching, common heritage in terms of value, common heritage in terms of progress by accumulation, common heritage in terms of transmission from generation to generation heritage, common heritage in terms of guiding, common heritage in terms of continuity, common heritage in terms of universality, common heritage in terms of unity, common heritage in terms of permanence, common heritage in terms of development, common heritage in terms of sharing, common heritage in terms of utility, common heritage in terms of labor, common heritage in terms of significance, common heritage in inclusiveness, common heritage in gradualism, common heritage in terms of complementarity, common heritage in terms of facilitation. Finally, in the study, it was examined how the categories of metaphors developed by the students to explain the concept of common heritage differ according to the genders of the students and it was determined that some differences emerged according to the categories.

Common heritage, secondary school, metaphor.