The Everyday Metaphors of Teaching: ‘Guide on the Side’

In my last post, building on Maxwell’s (2015) work, I outlined the inevitability of metaphor in our discourse as teachers and how understanding this in our profession can help us shed light on what our metaphors exaggerate but also hide. I posed two questions: With what metaphors in mind are we to teach? What evidence…

The Everyday Metaphors of Teaching: Problems and Solutions

It's an elephant guys - come on. Metaphor is so deeply embedded into the language of teaching that Greene (1973) argues that it would be possible to organise a history of educational ideas around recurring metaphors. As early as 1553, the classical humanist view of educators was as ‘gardeners’ (Rabelias, 1991). Rousseau (1979) saw the…