Are you an explorer with his expedition team, a guru with followers, a website with surfers, a gardener tending to his plants, or a law enforcement official dealing with potential criminals? What’s your metaphor for teaching, and the teacher-learner relationship?
In one of workshops our lecturers asked us to consider different metaphors and find one that sat well with our beliefs about the role of a teacher and a learner.
Initially I was drawn to the gardener/plant one (it was similar to the one I chose last year when I tried doing this course online), only to have it fervently shot down by the lecturer. I called her on it, asking her to explain. She saw plants as passive, without agency. Apparently it’s a popular metaphor, but only really works with young learners, as it goes against the ‘from the learner’ pedagogy.
I can see her point, though I was coming at it from a different aspect, as a plant science major. Seeds come with their own resources, needing additional resources to flourish into healthy plants. Different plants have different needs. The role of a garden is to provide these additional resources to plants when and if they need them, until they are sturdy enough to handle things on their own. Plants continue to grow over time, with the Gardener as their caretaker. This metaphor to me works feel for the teacher as a facilitator, someone who scaffold learning but doesn’t force it. I see aspects of this metaphor in the Montessori and Australian Development Curriculum method of teaching.
Despite thinking the gardener metaphor has value; I was also somewhat attracted to the law enforcement/potential crook pairing. Authority is important in a classroom (I like the idea of a Warm Authoritarian-an idea an encounter at the AEU Student Teacher Conference, similar to being a Warm Demander (Ross et al, 2008)) but it must be earned and not demanded…and I definitely don’t see my students as felons waiting to happen!
Other ideas I liked were:
Uncut diamond and miner/jeweler (every student has value and inherent worth, a teacher’s job is to polish it)
Tour Guide and Tourists (a more controlled version of the Explorer/explorers metaphor, but do you get the whole view from a tour?)
Sports Coach and Athlete (has mentor aspect, giving tools/skills and helping to prepare but leaves final performance in hands of students)
I still like the gardener/plant metaphor but can see its constraints. I can also see the value and draw backs of other pairings. This reminds me of a lesson we learnt during Science Communicator training. When you use metaphor to explain something, you are describing the similarities. It is also important however to acknowledge the boundaries of your metaphor, the dissimilarities. Not only does this clear up possible misconceptions, is also gives another opportunity for understanding.
If you are going to say ‘life is like a gobstopper’ it may be because it is ever changing and has many layers (reminds me of Shrek and onions). But life is not always sweet and it can sometimes be hard to swallow…
We can say that education is like a gardener taking care of his plants. But we must acknowledge that no student should ever be considered a weed.
References:
Ross DD, Bonday E, Bonday E and Hambacher E 2008 Promoting Academic Engagement through Insistence: Being a Warm Demander Childhood Education 84(3)
Mrs Cordial 