Making sense of teaching through metaphors: a review across three studies (original) (raw)
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This research aimed to determine the metaphorical perceptions of class teachers and reveal whether these perceptions are affected by the teaching approaches they adopt. Because teachers' opinions were collected in written form, this study is a descriptive survey model study. The participants of the study consisted of 64 class teachers chosen through the maximum variety sampling method. A data collection tool consisting of two open-ended questions was developed to determine the metaphors and educational approaches teachers adopt. According to research results, teacher metaphors are highlighted in two categories as "metaphors giving active roles to the teacher" and "metaphors giving passive roles to the teacher". Generally, teachers adopted one of the behaviouristic, cognitive, and constructivist approaches. This study revealed that participants who adopted behavioural and cognitive educational approaches produced metaphors giving active roles to the teacher. Participants who adopted the constructivist educational approach produced metaphors giving passive roles to the teacher. It was determined that there is a strong significant relationship between the metaphors that teachers produce and the educational approach they adopt.
Teaching and Teacher Education, 2007
Examination of prospective teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning on entry to teacher education programs, and tracking the development of these beliefs in light of academic and field-based experiences, is a critical task for teacher educators. The study examines metaphor construction as a tool to gain access to, and promote the development of, prospective teachers' beliefs through the incorporation of reflective activities that integrate academic and field-based experiences. Specifically, this research examines how metaphorical representations of preservice elementary teachers' in the United States and Europe changed and examines the factors influencing the development of beliefs and the modification of metaphors. r
Analytical Study of Teacher Educators’ Metaphors of Teaching
Journal of Education and Educational Development, 2016
Teaching metaphor is an important phenomenon which can be used to determine teachers’ perceptions regarding their job and their workplace (Turunen, 2003). This study was aimed to explore the metaphors of junior and senior teacher educators to get insights of what teaching was for them. A comparative analysis between the junior and senior teacher educators helped to understand how these metaphors changed over time. Data for the qualitative study were collected from the districts of Sargodha, Khushab and Mianwali situated in the province of Punjab, Pakistan. Fifty teacher educators teaching at postgraduate level participated in the study and filled in the survey questionnaire. The data were coded and analysed qualitatively. Six themes emerged from the data: religious obligations, economic activities, nature compatibility, life processes, emotional affiliations, and thought provoking activities.These themes were compatible with Chen’s (2013) classification of teachers’ personal metapho...
Book Review: Metaphors We Teach By: How Metaphors Shape What We Do In Classrooms
International Christian Community of Teacher Educators Journal, 2012
As I sit to write this review, I find myself musing over the subtitle to this text, How Metaphors Shape What we do in Classrooms. Worthy of a place in educational texts, this context of shaping targets a consideration for everyone working educationally with students. In this context, this book provides readers with much to think about. In my perspective, it is this consideration toward what I will call the heart and dispositional sensibility of education, a Christian sense of place, so to speak, that makes this book valuable.
Metaphors as blueprints of thinking about teaching and learning
Teaching and Teacher Education, 2001
This study analyses the metaphorical conceptions of learning based on the reflections of 50 experienced teachers in an evening course on instructional psychology. The metaphors were achieved by collaboration in small groups. ''Coreflection'' of group members was well suited to promote metaphorical reconstructions of teachers' tacit theories about learning. The results show that the majority of these teachers shares traditional metaphors depicting teaching and learning as transmission of knowledge, followed by a smaller group of teachers expressing constructivist metaphors. Only a minority seems to conceive of teaching and learning as a social process. These results are compared with metaphors formulated by 38 prospective teachers without classroom experience participating in a course on curriculum design. In further collaborations these metaphors should serve as stepping stones to broader and more profound conceptions of the nature of teaching and learning.
Prospective teachers' conceptions of teaching and learning revealed through metaphor analysis
Learning and Instruction, 2007
This study investigated the metaphors that prospective teachers in Turkey (N ¼ 1,142) formulated to describe the concept of ''teacher''. Participants completed the prompt ''A teacher is like. because.'' by focusing on only one metaphor to indicate their conceptualization of teaching and learning. Altogether 64 valid personal metaphors were analyzed and 10 main conceptual themes were identified. Significant associations were detected between participants' gender and study program type and six of the conceptual themes. Metaphors seem to provide a powerful cognitive tool in gaining insight into prospective teachers' professional thinking.
Metaphors as a Source of Teachers' Representations
Based on the understanding of the metaphor and on representation concepts, this study investigates implicit metaphors which were categorized in order to reveal the representations that the teachers have of their own role. The data were analyzed according to the thematic contents proposed by BRONCKART (1997) in his methodological proposal for linguistic analysis. The reflections are based on data obtained from a questionnaire answered by one group of Brazilian State School English teachers who are participants in a program of continuing education.
An Investigation of the Concept of Teacher Among Prospective Teachers through Metaphor Analysis
This study examines and classifies the metaphors that prospective teachers formulated to describe the concept of “teacher”. 485 male (39.7%) and 737 female (60.3%) teacher candidates (n = 1222) participated in the study. Specifically, the following questions guided this study: (1) What metaphors do prospective teachers use to describe the concept of “teacher”? (2) What conceptual categories can be derived from these metaphorical images? (3) How do these themes differ across participants’ program type and gender? Participants completed the prompt “A teacher is like . . . because ...” by focusing on only one metaphor to indicate their conceptualization of teaching and learning. The data were analyzed both qualitatively (i.e, inductive analysis) and quantitatively (i.e., chi-square test). According to the results, 111 valid personal metaphors and 10 main conceptual categories, based on the participants’ metaphorical images, were identified. Also, significant differences were detected between participants’ gender and program type with regard to the six dominant conceptual themes. The study concludes that metaphor is a powerful research tool in gaining insight into prospective teachers’ professional thinking about teaching and learning.
Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy, 2014
Background: Pre-service teachers (PSTs) typically do not change their beliefs about teaching and learning during teacher education unless they are confronted with, and challenged about, their held beliefs through powerful and meaningful experiences that cause them to recognise and value the change process and its consequences for themselves and their learners. It has been suggested that examining teaching narratives and metaphors might be one way for teacher education to help PSTs in recognising their pre-existing beliefs about teaching and learning. Such practices assist PSTs to reflect on and examine these beliefs and how they impact both their teaching and the learning of their students. Purpose: To understand how the process of examining metaphors influences PSTs' development of beliefs about teaching and learning. Data collection: Sixteen PSTs' initial metaphors and their revised metaphor with narrative of how and why their metaphor did or did not change. The metaphors were collected at the beginning and end of a 1-year Graduate Diploma in Physical Education Programme, respectively. Data analysis: In-depth analysis of the teaching metaphors and narratives utilised a naturalistic inquiry approach of repeated reading of the data identifying themes and patterns identified by the PSTs' responses. Findings: As PSTs analysed their developing beliefs about teaching and learning as articulated through their metaphors, they identified issues, events, experiences, people and context as influencing their changing metaphors. There were instances where PSTs had chosen to change or further extend their metaphor influenced by circumstances that arose in the course of their programme. Such circumstances led to the realisation that (1) teachers are only part of the teaching and learning process (along with students) and are not solely responsible for all learning that occurs in schools, (2) the reality of teaching allows one to refine what is feasible to accomplish as a teacher and (3) there is a necessity to address students' individual needs and acknowledge and accommodate different ways in which they learn. Conclusions: Several PSTs initially viewed themselves as transmitters of knowledge yet, as a result of experience, coursework and peer discussion, moved towards a more constructivist notion of teaching and learning. This was conveyed by the shifting of the learning process from being teacher-led to being student-centred and individually focused. Metaphors are a strong starting point in teacher education programmes. They encourage the PSTs to first acknowledge their experiences and held beliefs. They can then be provided with learning experiences and a community within which they might analyse, explore and modify their beliefs through ISSN 1740-8989 print/ISSN 1742-5786 online # 2012 Association for Physical Education http://dx.
Metaphor and meaning in the language of teachers
The Teachers …, 1989
Working in the fundamentally ambiguous context of schools, teachers are in need of a language that enables them to clarify meaning in the midst of complexity. Metaphor meets this need, especially in the schools of a pluralistic culture such as the United States, whose very nature is ...