"A Raised Drawbridge" or "A Spare Tire": What Teachers' Metaphors Reveal About Coping in the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Teacher Well-Being During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Distance learning has been a struggle for students, schools, parents, and teachers alike.. This study explores how creativity and metaphor may be an insightful way for teachers to frame their experience, revealing how they shift their focus from negative to positive. Metaphors are an important way to draw connections between abstract ideas and experiences and improve understanding in many communicative situations. This study investigates how teachers coped with distance learning in the global pandemic and progressed forward by analyzing their metaphors. By assessing the metaphor generation around distance learning by teachers before and after engaging in professional development on creativity, we found that the overall frequency of negative metaphors were substantially lower in the post-survey compared to the pre-survey.

Authors

• Gabriella Schuhe, Inflexion

• Ross C Anderson, University of Oregon