Personal Metaphors of Prospective Secondary Economics and Science Teachers
Source: Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, Volume 40, Issue 4, 2012, pages 395-408.
In this qualitative study, the authors the personal metaphors expressed by prospective secondary education teachers.
The participants were 46 science graduates and 41 economics graduates.
The metaphors are classified into the four categories of Leavy, McSorley, and Boté: the behaviourist/transmissive, the cognitivist/constructivist, the situative, and the self-referential.
The results showed most metaphors to fall into the behaviourist/transmissive category, followed by the cognitivist/constructivist, self-referential, and situative categories, although some teachers expressed metaphors framed in more than one category.
Of the 129 metaphors detected in the study, only one, of a chemistry graduate concerning the equilibrium between reactants, was associated with the prospective teachers' specific undergraduate education.
The rest were expressions of their overall vision of teaching and learning, regardless of the speciality.