How Career Changers Make Sense of Teaching through Professional Metaphors

This study offers a descriptive exploration of how specific life and career experiences metaphorically shape alternatively licensed, adult career changers' orientations toward teaching mathematics and science in urban secondary schools. The authors demonstrate that the metaphors these teachers employed provide important insights into what they expected and what they actually experienced in their work. They argue that a critical engagement of these metaphors has important implications for program administrators, university instructors, and school personnel concerned with the preparation and retention of teachers licensed through alternative paths. In particular, the authors draw from a career counseling approach in which opportunities are created for career-changing teachers and their mentors to reflect critically on certain values, ideals, and preferences embedded in an individual's career narrative.