The paper considers a teaching experiment carried out with secondary school students (9th grade), who face modelling tasks to approach some basic concepts of algebra and early calculus. The focus is on an embodied analysis of students' cognitive processes. The analysis highlights the use of metaphors as a means of sharing knowledge. (Contains 2…

The intention of this study was to discover how and to what extent children use simile and metaphor in their spontaneous oral language. Results showed that type of stimulus was the most influential factor in inducing children's oral metaphoric language, with the nature of the task also significant. (Author/GK)

Discusses classroom literary practices related to teacher questioning, retelling, literalism, and figurative language for children in the concrete operational stage; concludes that recent research on response to literature may say as much about what children are taught to do as what they do developmentally. Offers suggestions about teaching…

Reports on a study designed to: (1) produce a multiple-choice test which would measure children's comprehension of figurative language, and (2) obtain information about the development of figurative language comprehension in children. (Author/AM)

In this article, the author, an Associate Professor of Education at West Virginia State University, describes teaching classes of first-generation college students whose cultural stories provide rich frames of reference as they explore and process the material of the teacher education program. In the final exam each semester, she asks the students…

Fourth-grade students who participated in a yearlong, whole-class teaching experiment not only reconceptualized natural numbers but also generated flexible solution strategies to perform numerical computations mentally and in writing. Students' reconceptualization of number was mediated by their perceived resemblance between the physical action of…

This paper intents to analyze the influence of John Dewey's ideas in the movement that defended the educational renovation in Brazil (named New School) at the end of the 1920s and in the 1930s. For this, it explains two trends of that movement: the first is described by the metaphor of industrial or mechanical efficiency, whose emphasis was in the…

This paper is a collage of voices and ideas that attempts to move us away from an understanding of philosophy as argument and counterargument toward an ecosystemic, or wild, conception of philosophy as story in the mode of comedy. (Contains 4 notes.)

Members of Auburn University's educational leadership program at the doctoral level have created a new framework for learning and sharing knowledge, experience, and support. This framework is shared among the doctoral candidates in the form of series of core classes called "doctoral cohort." This paper captures the essence of the…

This study, set in the teacher education program of a large, Midwestern public university, examines metaphors used by elementary pre-service teachers in writing about diversity and teaching in diverse settings with diverse populations. Using metaphor analysis methodology grounded in Lakoff and Johnson's work on conceptual metaphor and working…

Objective: "The Matrix" has been a huge commercial and critical success and has spawned a series of books and essays exploring the philosophical and religious themes in the story. Methods: The authors propose that "The Matrix" can be interpreted as an allegory for an individual's journey into spiritual and mental health, achieved by overcoming…

Why is technology not used more in schools? Many researchers have tried to solve this persistent puzzle. The authors of this article report on their study of technology uses in 19 schools. They suggest an ecological metaphor, using the example of the introduction of the zebra mussel into the Great Lakes, to integrate and organize sets of factors…

Using data gathered during a case study of the "culture" of a Jewish secondary school, this article explores the indeterminate boundaries of Jewish identity. By examining the mechanisms that control what and who comes into the school, and what is approved and disapproved of in the school, a picture emerges of what and who is counted as…