Prospective teachers' conceptions of teaching and learning revealed through metaphor analysis

This study investigated the metaphors that prospective teachers in Turkey (N = 1, 142) formulated to describe the concept of "teacher". Participants completed the prompt "A teacher is like... because..." by focusing on only one metaphor to indicate their conceptualization of teaching and learning. Altogether 64 valid personal metaphors were analyzed and 10 main conceptual themes were identified. Significant associations were detected between participants' gender and study program type and six of the conceptual themes. Metaphors seem to provide a powerful cognitive tool in gaining insight into prospective teachers' professional thinking. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.