Metaphor generation is both a creative act and a means of learning. When learning a new concept, people often create a metaphor to connect the new concept to existing knowledge. Does the manner in which people generate a metaphor, via sudden insight (Aha! moment) or deliberate analysis, influence the quality of generation and subsequent learning…

The metaphors used by teachers to explain the nature of student learning and student difficulty can reveal a great deal about how teachers conceive the teaching and learning process. This is an important area of research as it can shed light on how they see their role in the learning process and how they should intervene to assist students in…

Several studies have explored the use of iconic gestures to improve the learning of foreign vocabulary. In this quest, words for abstract concepts have been largely neglected, under the assumption that abstract concepts have poor or non-existent sensory-motor representations. Yet, the Conceptual Metaphor Theory suggests that they are grounded on…

Abstract concepts dominate university science teaching, and much of this content is taught without sufficient connection to students' prior knowledge or everyday experiences. As this can be problematic for students, the aim of this research was to determine the utility and effectiveness of a professional development module on using analogies to…

"Where Mathematics Comes From" (Lakoff & Núñez 2000) proposed that mathematical concepts such as arithmetic and counting are constructed cognitively from embodied metaphors of actions on physical objects, and four actions, or 'grounding metaphors' in particular: collecting, stepping, constructing and measuring. This article argues…

Learning a second language (L2) is not merely mastering an additional linguistic system, but rather learning a new way of conceptualizing the world. Grammatical development does not always align simultaneously with conceptual development in L2. That explains why L2 learners may produce sentences that are grammatically correct, but pragmatically…

This paper draws on observational studies of three young children in order to demonstrate firstly, their intrinsic motivation to explore systematically through repeated patterns of action or 'schemas'; secondly, how those repeated actions appear and are explored in their emerging language demonstrating their increasing construction of and…

The threshold concepts approach to student learning and curriculum design now informs an empirical research base comprising over 170 disciplinary and professional contexts. It draws extensively on the notion of troublesomeness in a "liminal" space of learning. The latter is a transformative state in the process of learning in which there…

The last couple of decades have seen an enormous development in the study of embodied cognition through the investigation of conceptual mappings, such as conceptual metaphor and conceptual blending. Initially, this progress was achieved at a theoretical level, and more recently through empirical research in basic science--from psycholinguistics,…

This paper focuses on an inferential view on introducing new concepts in mathematics classrooms. A theoretical framework is presented which helps to analyse and reflect on the processes of teaching and learning mathematical concepts. The framework is based on the philosophies by Ludwig Wittgenstein and Robert Brandom. Wittgenstein's language-game…

This paper reports on the metaphors that 36 third-year university mathematics education students have about mathematics. These metaphors were investigated through a questionnaire with five open-ended items. An inductive analysis of the students' metaphors for mathematics indicated that students had well developed and complex metaphors about…

This monograph proposes a theoretical basis for advocating a program of disciplinary arts education as an integral part of general education from kindergarten through grade 12. The theme of the essay is the role that images play in everyday experience and the formation of the educated mind. Images are sensory patterns or patterns produced by the…

This volume of the 27th International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education Conference includes the following research reports: (1) The Affective Views of Primary School Children (Peter Grootenboer); (2) Theoretical Model of Analysis of Rate Problems in Algebra (Jose Guzman, Nadine Bednarz and Fernando Hitt); (3) Locating Fractions on…