How Metaphors of “Subject Matters” Change with Student Teaching

Abstract

  In order to research how metaphors of “subject matters” were changed in the course of a new student teaching “educational practice research” in Shiga University, we gave metaphor-making tasks to the second graduate students who were trained in teaching simulation and microteaching. We asked them to make a metaphor on a topic, “subject matters” before and after student teaching. They made many kinds of metaphors: playing, journey, cooking, information and so on. Through those metaphors we can comprehend students' concept about functions of subject matters, images of teacher and learning. Their concepts about functions of subject matters were making a process of learning and supporting children's learning. Many kinds of metaphors about learning were made by students, but almost of them were similar image reflected by learning by transmission. These results suggested that students' images were made by their learning experiences in childhood, and in order to change their images we have to give them meaningful case of teaching and learning.