Teacher Thinking about Knowledge, Learning and Learners: A Metaphor Analysis

Metaphors reflect the insight about teacher knowledge and its execution when teachers teach. Metaphors are acknowledged as elemental constituents of human cognitive processing that have a useful place in teacher thinking and beliefs research today. Metaphors manifest teacher's beliefs and 'Beliefs reflect their perceptions. Though it is true that a Metaphor analysis may not be able to completely interpret or uncover teachers' veritable beliefs as uncovering beliefs or personal theories requires a detailed qualitative analysis, it certainly helps us to gain deeper insight into teacher's thinking and our understanding of teacher's beliefs, behaviours and actions. The objectives of the study are: 1. What metaphorical images do preservice teachers use to describe Knowledge, learning and learners? 2. What typologies or categories can be evolved from these metaphors? 3. What images can be derived from preservice teachers' metaphors about knowledge, learning and learners? 4. What implications can be drawn from the Metaphor analysis for teacher education programmes? This research is the part of a larger study that comprised a sample of 637 preservice and in-service teachers in India with the objective of analysing their beliefs or personal theories about knowledge, learning and learners. The findings indicated that the participants unconsciously constructed and used their own metaphors that became the basis of their conceptualization about the three aspects - knowledge, learning and learners. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology