This document discusses metaphors related to teaching and learning. It argues that metaphors shape how we think about concepts in unconscious ways. The document asks readers to reflect on their own metaphors for learning and teaching by drawing pictures representing these metaphors. Readers then share and discuss their metaphors to consider how coherent and consistent their views of learning and teaching are. The document also discusses how metaphors like "work" shape schooling and asks readers to reflect on other potentially unhelpful metaphors.

1. Metaphors we teach by

2. Metaphors we live by
 The title is taken from George Lakoff and
Mark Johnson’s (1980) book ‘Metaphors We
Live By’
 They argue that much of our thinking about
everything is in terms of metaphors

3.  Metaphors link a new and unfamiliar
concept to an existing well-known concept
 They are related to similes and analogies

4.  Our purpose this morning is to spend a little
time thinking about the metaphors that we
unconsciously use in thinking about
teaching and learning, and make them
conscious and explicit for ourselves so that
we can evaluate whether or not they are
helpful in meeting our goals/living our
values

5. Your Learning Metaphor
 Think for a moment about what image or
metaphor you use when you think about
learning (Start with your own learning)
 Draw a picture or diagram to try to capture
the essence of your metaphor for learning

6. Your Teaching Metaphor
 Now repeat the process but for your
metaphor for teaching
 Don’t represent what you think I want to
hear, or an orthodox middle years
perspective, represent what you really
believe about teaching
 Draw a picture or diagram to represent your
teaching metaphor

7. Sharing your metaphors
 Share your learning and teaching metaphors
with the person next to you
 Make sure you really understand both
metaphors of the person next to you - ask
questions for clarification

8. Coherence and Consistency
 Make a judgement about whether the
learning and teaching metaphors of the
person next to you hang together - do the
assumptions about learning play out in the
assumptions about teaching?
 Why or why not?

9. Classroom Implications
 Return to looking at your own learning and
teaching metaphors
 What changes would be required to the way
we currently ‘do school’ - both at the
classroom level and more broadly - in order
to allow you to more fully teach in
accordance with your metaphors? (specify the
level of schooling you’re imagining - maybe a
school you went to or that your kids go to)

10. Working or Learning?
 Alfie Kohn has written about how ‘work’ is the
wrong metaphor for school – class work, home
work and so on – and we should talk about
learning
 Are his arguments plausible? Does this make
sense to you?
 How might this change of metaphors what you
do in the classroom?

11. Other harmful or unhelpful metaphors
 Alfie Kohn suggests that the ‘work’
metaphor is unhelpful for schools
 Can you think of other metaphors that
impact on teaching as a profession that are
unhelpful?

12. Metaphors we teach by
 The notion of metaphors and of exploring
our metaphors (and being aware of the
metaphors used by others) is valuable to
professional teachers as a tool for exploring
some of the hidden assumptions that can
help or hinder learning