After an examination of the current issues related to the shortages of nurses and nursing faculty in the United States, the importance of facilitating the transition of interested nurse clinicians into their roles as nurse educators in order to address the decreased number of nurses and nursing faculty became apparent. Mentoring in nursing…

Learning and teaching are faced with radically new challenges in today's rapidly changing world and its deeply transformed communicational environment. We are living in an era of images. Contemporary visual technology--film, video, interactive digital media--is promoting but also demanding a new approach to education: the age of visual learning…

Ambiguous figures have fascinated researchers for almost 200 years. The physical properties of these figures remain constant, yet two distinct interpretations are possible; these reverse (switch) from one percept to the other. The consensus is that reversal requires complex interaction of perceptual bottom-up and cognitive top-down elements. The…

In this paper I report a study of the conceptions of research held by a sample of doctoral students at an Australian research-intensive university. I take a unique approach by using metaphor analysis to study the students' conceptions. The students in this study were recruited for an on-line survey in which they answered questions relating to…

This article argues that African Americans, especially males living in urban areas, are physically and mentally trapped on a Devil's Island. The penal colony on the coast of French Guiana is a metaphor for the boundaries and constraints that close off opportunities and constrain African American historical knowledge. The article argues that…

This article is a focused response to the call for a "conscious use of crystallization," in qualitative research. To this end, the author brings into play a full-bodied textual metaphor, the "palimpsest," to stimulate the expansion of an integrated crystallization typology--comprised of woven and patched approaches.…

This exploratory study emerged out of my interests in dance-making and phenomenology. In order to develop a portrait of how student dance artists choreograph self-performed solos, I asked nine graduate student dance-makers to contribute accounts of their experiences. From my efforts to make meaning of the participants' experiences, a composite…

We explored relations between students' trade; epistemic beliefs, metacognitive monitoring and recall performance in the context of learning physics through metaphor. Eighty-three university undergraduate students completed questionnaires designed to measure their epistemic beliefs and prior knowledge about Newtonian physics. Students were…

In this text I concentrate on semiotic aspects of the theory of political identity in the work of Ernesto Laclau, and especially on the connection between metaphors, metonymies, catachreses and synecdoches. Those tropes are of ontological status, and therefore they are of key importance in understanding the discursive "production" of…

In the present study children and adolescents with Asperger syndrome (N=13) and a matched control group of typically developing children and adolescents were presented with 26 vignettes of daily life situations, including irony, metaphors, contrary emotions, jealousy, social blunders, and understanding intentions. The participants in the AS group…

This study aimed to determine the degree of metaphorical meaning acquisition reflected in the ratings of Mental Lexicon Organizations (MLOs) namely subordinate, compound and coordinate; and to explore the interaction effects of the self-regulating capacities and age on the ratings. The method is quantitative. 261 out of 1,278 students of English,…

Current debates about successful mathematics pedagogy suggest that mathematical learning and problem solving can be enhanced by using metaphors as they provide students with a tool for thinking. But assisting pre-service teachers to understand the importance of careful and accurate explanations for mathematical concepts remains an issue. This…

Observations of artistic activities' transformative influence in social sphere by social scientists have played an essential role in the rise of "participative art" works worldwide. Within the scope of the public relations practices performed by municipal administrations particularly in order to promote the cultural development of…

The purpose of this study was to determine the metaphors used by students to describe mathematical problem solving. This study focused on identifying how students interpret and perceive mathematical problem solving via conceptual metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003). These perceptions and interpretations were coded and analyzed qualitatively and…

In the era of the Internet, factors which influence effective learning in a Web-based learning environment are well worth exploring. In addition to knowledge acquisition and skills training, affect is also an important factor, since successful learning requires excellent affective performance. Thus this study focuses on learners' affective…