Education Practices and Challenges

Metaphor research in education examines how teachers and students use figurative language to make sense of what it means to teach and learn, treating phrases like "a classroom is a family" or "learning is a journey" not as decoration but as windows into underlying beliefs and assumptions. When researchers analyze the metaphors educators reach for, they can surface hidden pedagogical values, trace how professional identity forms, and identify where theory and practice diverge in ways that plain descriptive language tends to conceal. The Covid-19 pandemic sharpened these questions considerably, as the sudden shift to distance education forced teachers to reconstruct their mental models of the classroom almost overnight, producing a rich body of qualitative testimony about dislocation, adaptation, and loss. Researchers are now asking whether the metaphors that emerged during that period have durably reshaped how educators understand their work, and whether metaphor-based methods can serve as practical tools for teacher professional development rather than purely analytical ones.

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67,304

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144,961

Keywords

MetaphorsTeachingLearningEducationCovid-19 PandemicDistance Education