Metaphors in/of education

Slide 1: Metaphors in/of education

Metaphors in/of education

Dominik Lukeš

www.bohemica.com/metaphor

School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA

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Slide 2: Outline

Outline

• … in education
  • overview of metaphor inquiry in edu
  • metaphor as a tool for instruction
• … of education
  • TEACHER IS … (cognitive metaphors)
  • school should be … (generative metaphors)
• … there and back …
  • towards a classification of metaphor use

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Slide 3: Uses of Metaphor in Education

Uses of Metaphor in Education

• Make sense of the world
• Express complex meaning
• Construct alternatives
• Organize systematic concepts
• Invite interaction
• Add dramatic effect

adapted from Cortazzi and Jin 1999

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Slide 4: Context of Metaphor in Education

Context of Metaphor in Education

• Theory building
  • generative
  • exegetic
• Policy debates
• Teacher training
• Personal identity/motivation
• Organization and presentation of instructional content

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Slide 5: Research of Metaphor in Education

Research of Metaphor in Education

• Metaphors as an instructional tool
• Metaphors in the language of instruction
• Metaphors in conceptualization of self in teachers (new and experienced) and students
• Metaphors in educational discourse
  • Public discourse
  • Policy debates (not all conceptual)
  • Conceptualizing innovation (dtto)
  • Conscious and unconscious metaphors

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Slide 6: Metaphor as an instructional tool

Metaphor as an instructional tool

• Design of instructional content (Locus of classic debate)
  • Presentation to students for ease of understanding
  • Adapting ‘literal’ scientific content to ‘pedagogic’ level
• Method of inquiry to allow students to find personal meaning (both of academic content and own life)

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Slide 7: Cognitive Metaphors of Education

Cognitive Metaphors of Education

• SCHOOLS ARE PRISONS, GARDENS, FACTORIES, SOCIETIES, FAMILIES
• TEACHERS ARE PARENTS, GUIDES, DIRECTORS, ACTORS, ANIMAL TRAINERS
• STUDENTS ARE CONTAINERS, PLANTS, ANIMALS TO BE CONTROLLED
• LEARNING IS GROWTH, FILLING UP, LIFE, ACQUISITION OF GOODS, BUILDING A PORTFOLIO, BUILDING A STRUCTURE

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Slide 8: Education as a Source Domain

Education as a Source Domain

• LIFE IS A TEACHER

• EXPERIENCE IS A SCHOOL

• COMPANY IS A SCHOOL (The learning organization)

• EMPLOYEES ARE PUPILS

• BEING ABLE TO DO SOMETHING IS BEING ABLE TO READ (functional literacy, emotional literacy, numeracy, computer literacy, academic literacy, oracy)

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Slide 9: Generative Metaphors of Education

Generative Metaphors of Education

• Market metaphor

• Growth metaphor

• Family metaphor

• Engineering/scientific metaphor

• Society metaphor (education for democracy)

• Moral/humanistic metaphor (education to ensure moral humans)

• Ad hoc generative metaphors

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Slide 10: Metaphors and educational policy

Metaphors and educational policy

“Diverse and sometimes contradictory metaphors on schooling and school improvement dominate the thinking of policy makers, scholars and practitioners.” (Wincek, 1995)

“It was Napoleon who once famously described Britain as a nation of shopkeepers. Successive governments, since the premiership of Mrs Thatcher, have accepted this grocer-like view and attempted to turn every social institution into a commercial enterprise.” ... “This is a classic example of what philosophers call 'category error', the mistake of discussing - or in this case planning - one area of activity in the language and terms and with the concepts which are appropriate to another. ... It is a seriously fallacious form of reasoning.” (Kelly, 2004)

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Slide 11: Market metaphor

Market metaphor

• Product

• Consumers

• Manufacturing

• Trade

• Currency

• Efficiency

• Marketplace

• Business theory

• Parents

• Students

• Society

• Government

• Knowledge

• Information

• School

• Employment

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Slide 12: Examples of discourse

Examples of discourse

• “A school has to decide what kind of organization it is (a factory, a work community, a market-place?), who its customers are, what they want and how that is to be delivered and measured.” (Handy&Aitken, 1986)
• "We must give consumers of education a central part in decision-making. That means freeing schools and colleges to deliver the standards that parents and employers want. It means encouraging the consumer to expect and demand that all educational bodies do the best job possible. In a word, it means choice." (Kenneth Baker introducing Education bill in 1987)
• “It is only through the market mechanism of choice that we can get away from the stultifying and inherently unjust method of assigning children to schools according to their ZIP codes.” (Education Week, 2002)

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Slide 13: Areas of policy influenced

Areas of policy influenced

• School vouchers
• School choice
• School (academic) performance and league tables
• Performance-related pay
• No strikes for teachers (as professionals)
• Effective administration (school/district/nation level)
• Economies of scale (Edison schools)
• Superheads
• Curriculum for needs of country i.e. business
• Competition in textbook design
• Teacher training
• Assessment

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Slide 14: Growth (organic) metaphor

Growth (organic) metaphor

• Organic nature

• Nourishment

• Care

• Biological theory

• Birth

• Illness

• Health

• Death

• Learning

• Becoming adult

• Being mature

• Being a useful member of society

• Being a responsible citizen

• Being able to learn

• Mind/body

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Slide 15: Examples of discourse

Examples of discourse

• “Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. If man were born big and strong, his size and strength would useless to him until he had learned to make use of them.” … “The education of man begins at his birth; before speaking, before understanding, he is already learning.” (Rousseau, 1762)
• “The object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth.” (Dewey,1916)
• “We teach children, not subjects.” (Progressivist slogan)
• “The growth metaphor in itself thus embodies a modest conception of the teacher's role, which is to study and then indirectly to help the development of the child, rather than to shape him into some preconceived form...” (Scheffler, 1960)
• “only true education comes through the stimulation of the child’s powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself” (Dewey, 1897)

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Slide 16: Areas of policy influenced

Areas of policy influenced

• Child-centered education
• Textbook design
• National curriculum
• Teacher training in child psychology and physiology
• Physical education in the curriculum

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Slide 17: Family metaphor

Family metaphor

• Parents

• Children

• House rules

• Obedience/Duty

• Love

• Rearing/behavior control

• Society

• Teachers

• Students

• Principals

• School rules

• School allegiance

• Love for knowledge

• Society

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Slide 18: Examples of discourse

Examples of discourse

“The family metaphor is fundamental to education since society requires that school personnel and parents act as co-guardians of children. Even legally, school personnel act in loco parentis.” … “Mega Center's children developed a strong sense of loyalty to their individual family of learners and to the schoolwide family. The school's principal, teachers, and staff expressed both in words and in practice their conceptualization of school-as-family for the children. Although, the teachers and staff related to children as family, their relationships with one another did not flow from the family metaphor. Neither were parents and guadians of the children viewed through the lens of the family metaphor.”

(Wincek, 1995)

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Slide 19: Areas of policy influenced

Areas of policy influenced

• School environment
• Teacher role
• Parental involvement
• Corporal punishment
• Proportion of moral education in the curriculum
• Proportion of socialization as a purpose of education
• Sex education
• Breakfast clubs
• No child left behind / Every child matters

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Slide 20: Mixing metaphors for diversity

Mixing metaphors for diversity

• “it is undeniable that modern technology plays an increasingly important role in the process of wine-making, yet there is a definite limit to technical intervention. We are in fact operating within a triangle: nature, technique and care. Only the combination of these three can explain why each year, each winery, and even sometimes each bottle brings a different wine.” (Leirman, 1993)
• “Metaphorical language, it seems, has served as a vehicle for introducing concepts -- usually emanating from academic circles--into the parlance of practice. In decade after decade, scholars have clothed their newly developed ideas about leadership in metaphors from earlier eras.” (Beck and Murphy, 1993)

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Slide 21: Metaphor Theory After Education

Metaphor Theory After Education

• Metaphors before Lakoff&Johnson
• Affective and higher cognitive role of metaphor
• Metaphorbility – Aptitude for metaphor
• Consequences of metaphor (Metaphors and actions)
• Metaphors and the nature (mental representation of understanding)
• Metaphors in use vs. metaphors in mind
• Classification of metaphor use
  • Cognitive
  • Interpersonal
  • Textual

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Slide 22: Consequences of Metaphors

Consequences of Metaphors

• Metaphors influence actions
  • People who think of language as a tool are more likely to be pro-reform than those who think of it as a person
• Metaphors interpret actions/states
  • Teachers are more likely to see students as container than students who might see themselves as such
• Metaphors and actions/states cooexist
  • Experienced teachers see learning in a behaviorist way rather than constructivist way

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