Mapping the “Metaphors We Live By”: Representations of Teachers’ Local Knowledge of Teaching Writing

• In Event: Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Examining Teacher and Student Writing Across Contexts

Abstract

An initial thematic analysis of interview data about the changing landscape of writing and writing pedagogy across a vast and diverse Canadian province, grounded in the experiences, perspectives, and discourses of 25, kindergarten through 12th grade practitioners, revealed a surprising frequency of the use of metaphors. These metaphors were secondarily analyzed through multiple theoretical lenses, symbolically mapped through visual representations, and shared back with participants along with an invitation to symbolically re-represent their interview transcripts. Metaphors, visual maps, and symbolic representations are examined as powerful and innovative ways of collaboratively exploring the meanings practitioners make of their complicated contexts, roles, pedagogies, and identities as educators, writers, and teachers of writing, both locally and in relation to more global contexts.

Authors

• Michelle Honeyford, University of Manitoba

• Wayne Serebrin, University of Manitoba

• Jennifer Watt, University of Manitoba