Pre-service teachers' metaphors of teaching and literacy

The purpose of this study was to examine pre-service elementary teachers' metaphors of teaching and literacy and then relate their metaphorical images of literacy to content presented in the reading methods course. Specifically, 52 participants generated responses to open-ended statements, “Teaching is … ” and “Literacy is … ” Results indicated that the pre-service teachers' metaphors could be grouped into 11 themes for teaching and 14 themes for literacy. Two themes of teaching that arose in previous research—nurturing and guiding—were evident in the responses of this population as well, illustrating their commonality and perhaps universal nature. The primary literacy theme was the parts/ingredients metaphor (N = 8). Four dominant metaphors of literacy were identified: sequence of knowledge and skill, parts that come together as a whole, foundation of life, and journey. Twenty-three (or 44%) of the pre-service teachers wrote metaphors that related to content presented in the reading methods course. We ad...