ERIC Number: EJ823626
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2009-Jan
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0887-8730
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Reflecting on the Use of Metaphor: Two Professors' Processes of Discovery
Price, Christine G.; McGee, Christy D.
Teacher Educator, v44 n1 p56-69 Jan 2009
This article summarizes the literature concerning the use of visual and textual metaphors and describes outcomes of a project designed to help teacher education candidates begin integrating their personal beliefs about teaching with their growing professional knowledge and emergent practice. By using metaphors, teacher educators have the opportunity to help candidates solidify convictions and meanings and uncover "tacit or unarticulated" beliefs (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995, p. 6) that can lead to frame conflict (Reddy, 1993), that is, dueling metaphors. For example, there is a frame conflict in the conception of student value in the metaphors of teacher-as-police-officer and teacher-as-gardener. In one metaphor, students are perceived as deficit "others" who must be carefully watched by authorities; in the gardening metaphor, student potential is recognized as "more than" what can be seen on the surface. This article demonstrates how one university faculty explores textual and visual metaphor to encourage discourse among the candidates, other peers, and professors in a school of education. This extended dialogue gives candidates the opportunity to "compare their own characterizations to those of their peers, and depending on the responses of others, either maintain their own construals or bring theirs in line with those of the others" (Petrie & Oshlag, 1993, p. 602). This is the educative process of frame restructuring. As an added benefit of this project, the authors have found that using an artistic format combined with a written explanation of their work requires candidates to become more thoughtful, reflective practitioners.
Descriptors: Preservice Teacher Education, Figurative Language, Teacher Educators, Literature Reviews, Visual Learning, Discourse Communities, Discourse Modes, Curriculum Implementation, Assignments, Instructional Design, Teacher Characteristics, Beliefs, Discovery Processes
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: Teachers
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A