Metaphors About Teachers' Role and Didactic Interactions in Primary School

In a major book in cognitive linguistics, Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson (1980/2008) argue that metaphors are a common presence in every-day language, as well as fundamental mechanisms of the mind, shaping our understanding of experience and giving sense to the word. Arguing for the metaphorical nature of our conceptual system, the authors point out that our ordinary language is filled with metaphors even if we are not aware of their use and these metaphors shape the way we perceive the surrounding reality, the way we think, the way in which we relate to others and the way we act. Metaphors about education are present in the didactic discourse in schools and in the discourse about education in various contexts (teacher-parent interactions, media, literature). The presence of metaphors in classroom discourse, as well as their socio-cognitive functions and educational implications, have been illustrated by Badley and Brummelen (2012) in a book entitled, by analogy: Metaphors We Teach By: How Metaphors Shape What We Do in Classrooms. Starting from this theoretical background, the present study aims to investigate the presence of metaphors, as mental representations of primary school teachers, on two dimensions: teachers role and teacher-student classroom interactions. The study sample includes 105 primary school teachers, selected on a voluntary participation basis from Romanian public schools (Alba and Hunedoara counties). The results are discussed in relation to their potential relevance for creating more reflexive teachers and for the optimization of the teaching practice.