RT Article
T1 Seeing, grasping and constructing: pre-service teachers’ metaphors for ‘understanding’ in religious education
JF British Journal of religious education
VO 42
IS 4
SP 471
OP 489
A1 Walshe, Karen
LA English
PB [publisher not identified]
YR 2020
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1703152891
AB Despite its centrality to most, if not all educational endeavours, what is meant by understanding is highly contested. Using Religious Education (RE) in England as a case subject this paper examines pre-service secondary school teachers’ construals of understanding. It does so by employing conceptual metaphor theory to analyse their linguistic discourse. Specifically, it examines the metaphors employed by participants in a series of focus group discussions (FGD) and provides important insights into how understanding is conceptualised by these pre-service teachers who are preparing to enter the RE profession. The metaphors employed by these pre-service teachers (‘understanding is SEEING’; ‘understanding is CONSTRUCTING’; ‘understanding is GRASPING’), focus on the dynamic and developmental nature of understanding (rather than on the outcomes) and reveal subject specific ways of thinking and practicing. This paper argues that each of the three conceptual metaphors employed by participants suggest particular ways of acting towards understanding with significant implications for teaching and learning in RE.
K1 Understanding
K1 initial teacher education
K1 Metaphor
K1 metaphor analysis
K1 pre-service teachers
K1 Religious Education
DO 10.1080/01416200.2019.1708703