In-Service Math Teachers' Autobiographical Narratives: The Role of Metaphors

This paper examines the narratives of 50 in-service secondary school math teachers regarding lessons designed for preventing gambling abuse in their classes. Findings concerning teachers' beliefs, Bruner's constructivist approach and Lakoff and Johnson's embodied mind paradigm are the basis for the investigation. The results reveal that teachers systematically organise their thoughts in a metaphorical, embodied way, and some common patterns in teachers' narrative emerge, e.g. the uses of metaphors of "light", of "journey" and orientational metaphors.