using metaphor to probe students' conceptions of chemistry learning

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Using metaphor to probestudents' conceptions ofchemistry learningGregory P. Thomas & Campbell J. McRobbiePublished online: 29 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Gregory P. Thomas & Campbell J. McRobbie (1999) Usingmetaphor to probe students' conceptions of chemistry learning, InternationalJournal of Science Education, 21:6, 667-685, DOI: 10.1080/095006999290507

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INT. J. SCI. EDUC., 1999, VOL. 21, NO. 6, 667–685

RESEARCH REPORT

Using metaphor to probe students’ conceptions ofchemistry learning

Gregory P. Thomas and Campbell J. McRobbie, Centre for Mathematics andScience Education, Queensland University of Technology, Queensland,Australia

Changing students’ views of themselves as learners and the learning strategies they use requiresmethods to make their views regarding teaching, learning and their roles as learners explicit to them-selves and to teachers. This was an interpretive study that investigated students’ metaphors for them-selves as learners within a Year 11 chemistry classroom. Students’ metaphors were found to becongruent with their views of learning and their learning processes as evidenced from multiple datasources. In making students’ views explicit, metaphors can provide valuable information for practicingteachers and researchers who aim to investigate and enhance students’ learning processes and encouragemetacognition.

Introduction

A commonly accepted goal of science education is to develop students as lifelong,self-regulating learners. Consequently, as well as teaching students domain-spe-cific knowledge and strategies, teachers should also teach students about learningprocesses, and how to plan, monitor, evaluate and regulate them. That is, teachersshould assist students in becoming more reflective and metacognitive. Despite thegeneral acceptance of the aforementioned goal, schools are repeatedly identified asconservative institutions (Fullan 1993), where behaviourist paradigms remainmajor influences in their design, language and practice (Brown 1994), and where’ transmission’ remains the persistent and dominant metaphor for both the teachingand learning of science (Greeno 1989, McRobbie and Tobin 1995). Not surpris-ingly, students’ conceptions of learning and teaching have repeatedly been foundto reflect these transmissive models of educational practice (Baird and Mitchell1987, Berry and Sahlberg 1996, Treagust et al. 1996). Students have been found tosubscribe to passive, difficult-to-modify views of the roles they should play in theclassroom (Baird and Mitchell 1987, Baird and Northfield 1992, Gunstone 1992)and to possess entrenched, conservative conceptions of learning (Baird 1986,McRobbie and Tobin 1995). Each student’ s conception is a construction devel-oped as a result of that student’ s experiences, and these conceptions are mostlytacit, embedded in language and hidden from scrutiny (Bullough 1990).

Recent years have witnessed an increase in attempts to initiate change in theclassroom by assisting students to become more self-regulated and reflective with

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regard to their learning processes (see, e.g. Baird and Mitchell 1987, Baird andNorthfield 1992). Just as teachers’ conceptions of teaching, learning and their rolesas teachers are often barriers to teacher change (Sikes 1992, Fullan 1993, Tobin1993a, 1995), students’ conceptions of learning and their roles as learners can alsoact as barriers to learning and student change, especially when prescriptions forchanging classroom practice are not congruent with students’ individual and col-lective conceptions (Baird and Mitchell 1987, Zimmerman 1989, Gunstone 1992,McRobbie and Tobin 1995, Hand et al. 1997). Tobin (1993b: 216) asserts thatcurriculum change requires that teachers and students ’ reconceptualize the man-ner in which they make sense of their salient roles’ . Consistent with a social con-structivist approach to teaching and learning, it is essential that teachers seeking todevelop students’ learning processes be aware of students’ existing conceptionsregarding learning and their roles as learners, and use these as a starting pointfor discussion of alternatives. For just as it is necessary to facilitate students’awareness of their existing science conceptions when attempting to have themrevise these concepts, attempting to change students’ conceptions of learningand their roles as learners requires that the students also become aware of theirpre-existing, possibly tacit, conceptions of learning and their roles as learners.This would include students engaging in metacognitive reflection regardingtheir views of learning and their learning processes. Berry and Sahlberg (1996:19) assert, ’Because learners are always the key players in learning activities, weshould be concerned about what they think, believe and value about learning’ .Insight into students’ tacit conceptions might enable teachers, students andresearchers to more fully understand students’ classroom behaviour, includingtheir resistance to teachers’ use of strategies that aim to challenge the transmissio-nist, behaviourist paradigms that so often guide classroom practice and students’learning processes. Further, Davis (1997: 3) adds that ’ students’ beliefs aboutthemselves as science learners provide an interesting and largely untapped areaof research’ .

Accordingly, it is necessary for teachers to have access to strategies that enablestudents to become aware of and communicate their tacit knowledge and under-standing regarding learning and their roles as learners, so that appropriate actionfor enhancing students’ knowledge of, and practice with, alternative strategies canbe initiated. Phenomenographic studies (Marton et al. 1993, Berry and Sahlberg1996) have shown that students’ conceptions of learning and their roles as learnersfall along a continuum from passive transmissionist perspectives to constructivist,transformative perspectives. Notably, Berry and Sahlberg also found that middleschool students had difficulty communicating their conceptions of learning toothers. This last finding parallels that of Macdonald (1990) who found thatstudents lack the language to discuss their learning processes. This language deficitconstitutes a problem for students communicating their conceptions of learningand their learning strategies. In an attempt to overcome this language deficit,Berry and Sahlberg (1996: 34) used a range of approaches, including a metaphortask in which students were: (i) asked to select one picture from four pictures thatwere analogous to four conceptions of learning; and (ii) write why they chose thepicture they did. They concluded that ’by the help of metaphors a pupil may learnto see something that (s)he has not understood before’ and that metaphors mightbe helpful in developing a common language about learning and metacognition.

668 G. P. THOMAS AND C. J. MCROBBIE

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Metaphors are comprehensively used as lexical gap fillers for events andphenomena that are personal and difficult to describe (Paris 1988). They facilitatethe understanding of ’ relatively abstract or inherently unstructured concepts interms of more accessible, concrete subject matter’ (Lakoff 1994: 251). Difficultiesin describing teaching, learning and classroom roles are, however, not restricted tostudents in science classes. Tobin and Tippins (1996), reviewing the relationshipsbetween teacher metaphors and the teaching and learning of science, noted thatteachers ’ . . . often have a limited language to describe teaching and learning’ .Tobin (1990, 1993a), and McRobbie and Tobin (1995), acknowledging the im-portance of making tacit referents of practice explicit, used metaphors to assistteachers and students to make their tacit conceptions of teaching explicit. Theteachers’ metaphors became objects available for scrutiny and reflection, wereused to foster ’ . . . critical discussions about enacted science curricula. . . ’ , andacted as ’ . . . powerful new tools for generating new ways of thinking about teachingand learning of science’ (Tobin and Tippins 1996: 711).

While metaphor has been used to good effect with teachers in, e.g. the afore-mentioned research, reported research on the use of student-generated metaphorsas a means of assisting students, teachers and researchers to understand and dis-cuss students’ tacit conceptions of their learning processes and their learning rolesis less common. Just as changing teachers’ metaphors for themselves acted as amaster switch for changing teaching practice (Tobin 1990, 1993c, Ritchie 1994),identifying and changing students’ metaphors for themselves as learners may pro-vide a means of changing students’ referents that guide their learning and, hope-fully, their learning processes. However, Thomas and McRobbie (1995) foundonly tentative evidence to suggest that students’ lack of reflection and relianceon external authorities for their learning could be communicated through meta-phors which students themselves devised. Ensuring that students’ metaphors arecredible reflections of their conceptions of learning and their roles as learners is anecessary first step in the future use of metaphors as tools for improving sciencelearning. Accordingly, this research explored the credibility of students’ meta-phors by investigating metaphors that students devised to communicate andmake explicit salient features of their tacit conceptions of learning and theirroles as learners.

Research sample and context

This study reports on the use of metaphor as a means of eliciting the existingconceptions, attitudes and knowledge of individual students regarding the natureof teaching, learning and their roles as learners. It comprises part of a larger,18 week research project related to developing students’ metacognition in a chem-istry classroom which was studying stoichiometry, reaction mechanisms and reac-tion thermodynamics. The investigation was conducted in the context of aneducationally authentic Year 11 high school chemistry classroom. The class con-sisted of 11 males and 13 females in a non-government secondary school of 650students in regional Southeast Queensland, Australia. While there were no restric-tions on entry into chemistry at Year 11, students electing to take the subject atYears 11 and 12 were generally successful general science students in Years 8–10.

The chemistry classroom in which the research was conducted differed fromother science classrooms in the school. The teacher was attempting to develop a

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community of learners (Brown and Campione 1990, Brown 1994) who were devel-oping understanding of chemistry through the social construction of knowledge.Consequently, a primary objective was to reduce students’ dependence on theteacher as the primary transmitter of knowledge and to make the classroommore student centred but still teacher controlled (Gunstone 1995). Accordingly,the students were provided with increased opportunities for selecting, planningand managing their actions within the classroom. The classroom was divided intoareas each supporting a different activity, e.g. practical work, computer-assistedlearning activities using interactive software, group discussion, and individualwork from text or problem sheets. In the remaining time, students were requiredto select, plan, engage in and monitor activities that they thought would advancetheir learning. At the commencement of the year, the students were assisted by theteacher in developing fortnightly and term plans. The teacher spent his timemoving between groups and individuals discussing students’ learning progress,providing advice when requested, and developing understanding with them. Toensure that students had been given reasonable time to adjust to this classroom, itsmechanics and accompanying expectations, the research commenced at the begin-ning of the second half of the school year.

Methodology and data collection

The research team consisted of the classroom teacher and a university researcher.The classroom teacher was involved as the on-site researcher. At the commence-ment of the larger 18-week study, data were collected over a 6-week period toprovide a context for the research at both collective and individual levels. Thefindings presented in this study are drawn from data collected during that initial 6-week phase.

An interpretive design was employed, as the research was fundamentally con-cerned with ’ the immediate and local meanings of actions, as defined from theactors’ points of view’ (Erickson 1986: 119). Social constructivism was the referentfor the planning, implementation, analysis and interpretation of the data.Trustworthiness, authenticity and the benefits of a hermeneutic cycle were im-portant considerations in the design of the study and analysis of data (Guba andLincoln 1989).

A significant feature of this study is that qualitative information obtainedusing interpretative methods is complemented by quantitative informationobtained from students’ questionnaire responses regarding their learning pro-cesses, classroom environment and self-concepts as thinkers. This approach issimilar to that used by Fraser and Tobin (1990) in their exploration of students’and teachers’ perceptions of classroom environments. We probed for assertionsthat consistently emerged from data obtained from the range of data collectionmethods with the intention of constructing a detailed description of the students’perceptions of their learning processes and their roles as learners. Through atriangulation of data derived from multiple data sources we sought to ensure thecredibility (Guba and Lincoln 1989) of our assertions.

We used journals (Fogarty 1990, McCrindle and Christensen 1995) in whichstudents maintained ongoing communication with the teacher on issues related totheir learning processes and impressions of specific classroom events occurringduring the research period. Students wrote their metaphors for themselves as


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learners of chemistry in their journal. The teacher read the metaphors and repliedby writing questions that sought to amplify or clarify entailments of the meta-phors. Students also answered questions in their journals about learning, theirlearning processes, the chemistry classroom and their roles as learners.

The Learning Processes Questionnaire (LPQ, Biggs 1987) yielded informationrelated to the students’ use of three possible approaches to learning: a surfaceapproach; a deep approach; and an achieving approach. Each approach considereda student’ s motives for learning and the strategies they employed. A surfaceapproach to learning is guided by extrinsic motivation with the student engagingin learning tasks with the goal of limiting outcomes to bare essentials. The stu-dent’ s learning strategies are usually based on rote learning, expediency and mini-mally meeting institutional requirements. On the other hand, a deep approach tolearning is guided by intrinsic motivation and a search for meaning with thestudent interrelating new knowledge with prior knowledge and operating at ahigher level of conceptualization than a student adopting a surface approach. Anachieving approach, like the surface approach, is outcome focused. It differs fromthe surface and deep approaches because, rather than describing the manner inwhich students engage in learning tasks, it describes ’ the ways in which studentsorganize the temporal and spatial contexts surrounding the task’ (Biggs 1988: 129).Students adopting this approach seek to maximize their chances of obtaining highmarks irrespective of the subject matter, and in so doing enhance their ego andself-esteem. Elements of both deep and achieving approaches are typically promi-nent in successful students (Biggs and Moore 1993). We used the LPQ to helpdistinguish between students on the basis of their perceived learning processes,and to seek confirming and disconfirming evidence regarding the learning pro-cesses the students reported using. We saw this as essential in conferring confirm-ability on our interpretation of the entailments regarding the students’ learningprocesses that were drawn from their metaphors.

The Individualized Classroom Environment Questionnaire (ICEQ, Fraser1990) provided information on students’ actual and preferred perceptions of theindividualized nature of the learning environment. Previous research into learningenvironments has shown that students’ perceptions of their learning environmentare closely related to their views of learning and their roles as learners (McRobbieand Tobin 1997). Therefore, we used the ICEQ: (i) to provide quantitative infor-mation on the learning environment from both class and individual perspectives;and (ii) as a source of stimulus material for interviews in which we probedstudents’ conceptions of learning and their perceived roles. The scales of ’perso-nalization’ , concerned with perceived emphasis on opportunities for individuals tointeract with the teacher, and their personal welfare and social growth; and ’ inde-pendence’ , the perceived extent to which students are involved in decision-makingand control over their own learning and behaviour, are reported, as these scaleswere salient to the research goal in this study.

We used the self-concept as a thinker scale (SCAT, Edwards 1991) to inves-tigate students’ self-concepts related to their thinking and problem solving, andtheir learning and thinking processes. Specific items on the SCAT, e.g. ’ I rarelythink about my own thinking’ , and ’I am not good at using information’ , providedinformation on students’ thinking processes which were further investigated dur-ing interviews on their learning processes in chemistry. Students scoring high onthe SCAT have been found to variously perceive themselves as being more suc-


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cessful and metacognitive problem solvers, able to discern between important andunimportant ideas, and able to use their thinking in real life more than thosestudents with low SCAT scores (Thomas 1992).

Video cameras, located at the front and rear of the classroom, recorded all thelessons during the research period. As well as providing a record of student andteacher behaviour, videotape of these lessons was used as a source of episodes forstimulated recall interviews (O’Brien 1993). Students were interviewed on theiritem responses on the questionnaires. Students were also interviewed regardingtheir metaphors for themselves as chemistry learners and their perceptions of thenature of the thinking–learning process. Interviews and selected videotape epi-sodes were transcribed. Extensive member checking of interview transcripts wasused to contribute to the credibility of the data on which the final assertions werefounded. Tentative assertions for each individual regarding their metaphors andlearning processes were recycled with students in subsequent interviews so as tofurther confirm or disconfirm those assertions. Assertions were continually modi-fied or rejected on the basis of new evidence.

Results and analysis

The results are presented as case studies for two students, Debbie and Beverly(pseudonyms), selected for the variations they present. Each student’ s metaphor,as written in their journal, is presented as the initial expression of their conceptionof learning and their perceived roles as learners of chemistry. This is followed by areview of the entailments arising from their metaphors, constructed from inter-views, journal entries, observational data and responses to questions arising fromthe researchers’ ongoing reflection on each metaphor.

Consideration of the whole class data in this study showed positive correla-tions between students’ actual achievement in complex reasoning, which is theproblem-solving section of the students’ assessment, and their perceptions oftheir use of deep (r = 0.48, p < 0.02) and achieving approaches (r = 0.53,p < 0.01). As the complex reasoning assessment required students to demonstratea deep understanding of subject matter and the application of critical thinkingstrategies, these correlations provide support for the contention that the students’self-reported learning processes (LPQ scores) are consistent with the actual learn-ing processes they employ, as is also claimed by Biggs (1988), and Biggs andMoore (1993). The positive correlation between SCAT scores and complex rea-soning achievement for the whole class (r = 0.60, p < 0.01) supports the conten-tion that students’ perceptions of themselves as thinkers are consistent with theoutcomes of the learning processes they employ.

Debbie

Debbie was achieving at a pass level. She found chemistry difficult and acknowl-edged that she ’hadn’ t been doing that well’ . She chose chemistry to maximize heroptions for doing tertiary study and was ’going to stick at it no matter what’ .Despite her dogged persistence, her achieving approach score (table 1) suggeststhat she did not employ an achieving approach as much as many other classmembers. She confidently defined learning as ’ accepting that you don’ t knowsomething, and the teacher does, that you want to know it and learn it, and study-


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ing, practising or extending on something to improve or acquire a skill’ . However,her metaphor conveyed an image of her being lost and confused in the chemistryclass.

I am a person in a maze. Except there are no dead ends in this maze, only barriers thatcan be gradually broken down. The maze is not only the concepts but the learning aswell. There are a lot of pathways, lots of routes and lots of barriers to be broken downon the way but once overcome they all lead in the one direction.

For Debbie, the maze had both ’purpose and direction’ , and the journeythrough it represented ’a struggle but not impossibilities’ . The barriers Debbiereferred to were difficulties in learning and understanding chemistry that were’broken down with understanding which comes from the work, question asking,grasping, familiarity, application and confidence with the material’ . The pathwaysand routes in the maze represented ’different paths of learning, different ways oflearning through different techniques, different opportunities, different resources,different ways of dealing with things’ . Debbie admitted, ’ I haven’ t explored manyof these pathways’ .

Debbie’ s current practice was a product of her past experiences in scienceclasses. She believed that she did not possess the necessary knowledge or skillsfor self-regulating her learning, and this influenced her view of herself as a thinkerin the chemistry classroom. Her lack of belief in such knowledge and skills isreflected in her comparatively low score on the SCAT (table 2).

USE OF METAPHOR TO PROBE CONCEPTIONS OF CHEMISTRY LEARNING 673

Table 1. Learning processes questionnairea data for Debbie, Beverly andthe class.

Surface approach Deep approach Achieving approach

Debbie Raw score 33 26 38Z score - 0.11 - 1.36 - 0.57

Beverly Raw score 33 45 49Z score - 0.11 1.00 1.53

Class Mean 33.66 37.04 41.04SD 5.13 8.05 5.22Range 26–45 24–54 32–50

a Maximum possible raw score = 60.

Table 2. Self-concept as a thinkera data forDebbie, Beverly and the class.

Debbie Raw score 123Z score - 0.66

Beverly Raw score 153Z score 1.04

Class Mean 134.6SD 17.64Range 95–160

a Maximum possible raw score = 200.

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She had never queried classroom practices before and had become dependenton the teacher transmitting information. Despite Debbie’ s awareness of alterna-tives, her past reliance on the teacher resulted in a lack of reflection regarding, orinvestigation of, alternative methods of learning, to the extent that Debbie wasknowingly engaged in practices she knew to be inappropriate for learning in hernew context.

I think just by doing the things that learning will take place. I know that’ s not rightbut that’ s what I think. I’m more one who just sits there. That’ s just what I’m used to.I’ve got into a habit over three years of just remembering things for a test and thenjust forgetting about it . . . that’s all I used to do in science and I found that’s all it(science) used to be. We’d be having a lesson and I’d just write down everything thatthey wrote up on the board. I got so used to that. I just did it. I didn’t even think, Ijust did it . . . and it would pop up on a test.

Debbie conceded that her learning and problem solving was limited mainly todealing with factual essentials. ’ I usually write down the first sentence or the basicidea (in the textbook), then I do the questions. I just learn the formula and how toapply it. I don’ t try and do anything else . . . I just keep doing more questions’ .Rote learning and memorization were the dominant elements in her learning pro-cess. Her LPQ scores (table 1) support this contention as they confirm that sheperceived that she used surface strategies, which are characterized by rote learning,more than deep strategies.

Notably absent from Debbie’ s metaphor was any reference to the mental pro-cesses or social processes she used when learning. Her knowledge and understand-ing of the reasons for using particular learning processes was scant. In an interviewon her SCAT responses, she reiterated that it was ’completely true’ that she rarelythought about her own thinking. While Debbie acknowledged that alternatives toher current learning practices existed, she conceded that she had not consideredusing them. She was able to describe only one such alternative pathway. She hadbeen shown how to construct concept maps for linking ideas together in a sciencelesson 2 years before but chose not to use them to assist her learning. Therefore,Debbie was metacognitive to the extent that she possessed an awareness thatalternative learning practices existed, but her metacognition was not substantialenough to initiate a change in her learning practice.

I should try to link ideas together but I don’ t do this. I don’ t make a conscious effortto do that. In the past I didn’ t have to link much together. It probably would havebeen better if I did but I got away with not doing it.

When asked why, despite acknowledging that her current practices were notenabling her to meet her academic goals, she did not focus on improving the wayshe learnt or exploring the other pathways entailed in her metaphor, she replied ’Iwouldn’ t know what to look for’ .

As a result of her uncertainty regarding the efficacy of her learning processesand her lack of alternative learning pathways, Debbie was uncomfortable with herlevel of independence in the classroom, and clearly articulated her desire for lessindependence and more personal attention in class. Her score on the personaliza-tion scale (table 3) suggests that Debbie perceived she was not experiencing asmuch personalized attention as other class members perceived they were, and thatshe preferred even more. Her scores on the independence scale (table 3) suggestthat while she perceived that she was not allowed to act as independently as other


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class members thought they were, she preferred even less independence than mostother class members. Debbie’ s perceptions are consistent with her being unsure ofhow to learn in a context where she was asked to take greater control of herlearning, and therefore preferring less independence and more personalized atten-tion from the teacher. They are also consistent for a student who lacked confidencein her learning and thinking abilities. According to Debbie it was the role of theteacher to control and monitor her learning processes. Her prescriptions forimproving her learning typically related to the teacher taking a greater role inguiding her learning.

Sometimes I’m not really sure what I should do because I went from being so depen-dent on the teacher telling me what to do and then I went straight into this. I justneed, say every week, something to aim for, somewhere I should be at. I could do thatmyself but I don’t really know how much time I should be spending on each differentthing or how long it should be taking me to do each thing. I’d also like it if you wouldbe able to monitor my progress a little bit more so I can say, ’Right, I need to do morehere’ , or ’ I’m on the right track, keep going like that’ . I would prefer less indepen-dence in class. Maybe when I’m more capable and confident, I’ ll feel more comfor-table with this much independence in class.

While Debbie’ s metaphor was salient for the majority of class time andreflected the difficult and uncertain time she was experiencing in the chemistryclassroom, she maintained that it was not always representative of her understand-ing or perceptions of her role as a learner. In a stimulated recall interview, Debbiewas shown video of herself as the teacher was talking to all students in a lecturemode from the front of the classroom. She is seated and watching the teacherintently. Debbie acknowledged feeling comfortable with this classroom event,explaining ’I think it’ s good if I can listen to it, and let it sink in’ . Debbie furtherexplained that she was not in the maze when the material presented was ’ straight-forward and I’m following it’ as in a lecture presentation. She suggested that insuch situations she appreciated the structured approach of the lecture. ’ I was justgoing through my mind . . . when you mentioned atomic mass and relative mol-ecular mass, and, in a way, ticking it off’ . While no alternative metaphor wasoffered to describe her learning processes during the teacher’ s short lectures,Debbie’ s use of words, e.g. ’ sink’ to describe her relationship with the informationpresented, suggests a largely passive, surface approach to learning.

USE OF METAPHOR TO PROBE CONCEPTIONS OF CHEMISTRY LEARNING 675

Table 3. Individualized classroom environment questionnairea data forDebbie, Beverly and the class.

Personalization Independence

Actual Preferred Actual Preferred

Debbie Raw score 33 48 33 26Z score – 1.11 1.31 – 1.27 – 1.39

Beverly Raw score 38 41 42 36Z score – 0.13 – 0.5 1.7 0.47

Class Mean 38.66 42.91 36.75 33.45SD 5.08 3.88 2.93 5.34

aMaximum possible raw score = 50.

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A significant change in Debbie’ s thinking about her learning took place whenthe teacher finished speaking to the whole class and students began their self-planned learning activities. It was at this stage of classroom life that Debbieentered the maze. This is evident in the following excerpt from the same stimu-lated interview. In the video Debbie is seen sitting alone at her desk sortingthrough papers and looking around the classroom. Around her, other studentsare engaged in practical work, viewing videos, private study and small groupdiscussion.

T Now we’ re at the point where the teacher’ s finished talking about stoichiometry atthe front and the class has broken up to do some individual work. What are youdoing there?

D Just working out where everything is. I’m not sure.T Are you getting into the maze here? Is this the time where the metaphor holds?D Yes.T Why’ s that?D Cos I don’ t really know what to do I suppose.T Is this a typical passage of time for you?D Yes.T How do you know you’ re in the maze now?D I’m not doing anything constructive. Doesn’ t look like I am anyway. That’ s what I

do a lot of the time. I’m not really sure of what I should be doing whereas last yearsomeone would have said, ’Do this’ . And I’d . . . I’d just do it. But there (on thevideo) I’m not sure of exactly what I should be doing. And then I muck around anddon’t do anything.

Debbie summarized her understanding of the differences between the twosections of the lesson. ’Well, you see, I find that when I listen to your expositionsI concentrate and I get a lot out of them but when I’m left to do something else Idon’ t get anything done’ . Because the majority of class time was devoted tostudents’ self-directed learning, Debbie’ s lack of learning progress constituted aserious problem. She lacked the knowledge or confidence required to initiate andsustain change regarding her learning processes. The discussions followingDebbie’ s reflections on her learning processes and the quality of her learningwere sometimes emotional experiences for Debbie. However, she acknowledgedthe value of developing her metaphor as part of this introspective process. ’ It hasmade me realize that I am an individual in chemistry and that the barriers aren’ tdead ends. Thinking about how I break down these barriers has made me thinkabout my learning processes’ .

Beverly

Beverly was a high achiever in chemistry, found chemistry challenging, and saw itas necessary for her future plans and therefore as a subject she needed to do well in.’ It is a subject I need to get into the course at uni (physiotherapy) and I liked it andI did well at it in Junior School’ . Physiotherapy was an in-demand course thatrequired matriculation in the top 3% of the Year 12 cohort. Her motivation toobtain higher grades and her perception that she was behaving as a model studentrelative to other students is also supported by her achieving approach score on theLPQ (table 1). Analysis of videotape of classroom transactions indicated thatBeverly was diligent in class and wasted little time on non-subject matters. She


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also reported making regular time for chemistry study at nights and on weekends; aclaim supported by her peers.

While semester and mid-semester assessment tests and assignments consti-tuted a short-term focus for her and helped motivate her, learning involved per-sonal growth with respect to knowledge and an acknowledgment thatunderstanding developed in a current unit may have a future use. She definedlearning as ’ investigating new information in various areas of a subject so we canhave a broader long-term knowledge and understanding of the subject, not just acrammed, short-term knowledge for the test, but a good clear understanding’ andadded, ’Learning is not just knowing, it is understanding, so we can build on thisin any given situation and apply it’ . Beverly’ s metaphor of her learning processesreflected principles most consistent with a more liberal, constructivist view ofinformation processing (Mayer 1996).

My learning is a person eating an apple. Slowly but surely I nibble my way throughmy chemistry absorbing all the nutrients and letting the unimportant stuff pass outthe other end. Just as I enjoy eating apples and they are good for me – my chemistry isalso good and I enjoy learning (eating) it. The core of the apple is the test at the end ofeach unit and every new unit is a new apple. The core gets chucked away but all thenutrients from the previous apple are in my body still and this helps my brain tocomprehend new topics (i.e. I refer to stuff I learnt in the previous topics to help meunderstand new stuff).

Beverly’ s understanding of her learning processes was related to her view ofknowledge. Each unit of chemistry needed to be systematically understoodthrough an active, purposeful process of deconstructing and recoding largerchunks of information into smaller ’bits’ . These bits were mappings for units ofknowledge. The learning process involved identifying the relationship of newinformation to her prior knowledge, and identifying, then discarding, extraneousor irrelevant detail.

As you go through (chemistry) you just learn bits and pieces and by the end you canprobably tie it all together and know lots of stuff. You kind of accept the fact thatthere’ s just way too much to know it all so you just start learning as much as you can.You take a bit at a time and, sort of, digest all that stuff, and then you can move ontoanother bit and that’ s basically what you do when you’ re learning stuff. As I readchemistry mumbo jumbo it has to be broken down into terminology I can rememberand understand. The breaking down process also involves separating nutrients fromwaste products if there are any. All the nutrients get absorbed into my system so,when you read the textbook and you find all these little facts they, sort of, absorb intoyour brain, hopefully. Every unit we do, I can add a little. Every unit is a whole applebut there’ s all these apples out there.

The claim that Beverly viewed aspects of her learning as a digestive process isfurther evidenced in the language she used to describe changes to the informationas a result of that process. The nutrients she stored inside her were not in the sameform as when she first began to digest them. Instead they were altered from a formthat was ’all complicated’ and ’very complex’ to a form that had become ’now quitesimple by the end of it’ . These stored nutrients comprised her prior knowledge.Beverly asserted that the knowledge from previous units was important and essen-tial to her learning. Once again, language entailed by the metaphor was used tocommunicate these ideas.


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The nutrients I store remain in my body and I use those nutrients to understand orapply to the next topic. They’ re kind of always in there but sometimes they’ re dor-mant and we have to go back and think about it before we can really remember whatthey were. Like, we’ve learnt them and they’ re in there and when we’ re doing a unitwe know how to use them and we get really good at them.

Learning, therefore, was seen by Beverly as a gradual process where buildingrelations and connections between newly presented information and prior knowl-edge was considered essential for developing understanding. The degree of con-nectedness and referencing with prior knowledge was also seen as a measure forassessing her learning progress. Apart from success in school assessment, herongoing test of her understanding of chemistry was if she could ’use new learningin other areas and relate it to other things’ . She added, ’once you know how to usethe new knowledge and relate it to other things it gets easier to understand’ .Linking ideas and connecting with prior knowledge were essential aspects ofBeverly’ s learning processes identified through her metaphor, interviews and jour-nal entries.

Missing from her metaphor, as was missing from Debbie’ s, was any referenceto the importance she placed on social interaction as an essential element of herlearning processes. The person described in her metaphor was a solitary entity. Incontrast to Debbie, Beverly commented that social interaction with other studentswas an important aspect of her learning processes because ’ if somebody else has adifferent understanding or they’ve read different things, or they’ve drawn fromdifferent sources, then you can combine your ideas and come up with a muchbroader knowledge of the whole thing’ .

Despite being able to outline her understanding of her learning processes viaher metaphor, Beverly claimed that she was not metacognitive and did not con-sider her thought processes as she was learning. She conceded that it was ’mostlytrue’ that she rarely thought about her own thinking and added, ’Thinking justkind of happens to me. You just think. I always just learnt. I just did it. I reallydidn’ t think about it. Everyone thinks about everything all the time. They don’ treally think about their thinking’ . She stated that she made connections betweenknowledge from chemistry and contexts outside the classroom ’subconsciously’ ,and that she decided what was important and unimportant to learn by ’ instinct’ .For Beverly, instinct was

. . . hard to explain but if you’ re reading through something that just doesn’ t seem torelate to what you’ve been doing on it, or it doesn’ t seem to be fitting in or it doesn’tseem right, then you kind of think ’Oh, well, probably don’ t need to know it’ .

The instinctive character of Beverly’ s learning processes was also evident inher explanation of the degree of control of her thinking that she had when relatingnew information to prior knowledge. ’You’ re conscious you’ re doing it but youdon’ t do it on purpose. It just happens naturally. Some wires probably connect orsomething’ . She was unable to explain why this linking occurred, suggesting ’Itjust kind of, . . . I know it’ s there. It just happens’ . The absorption of nutrients intoher brain, according to her, was a ’hopeful’ process. The hopeful quality of thisaspect of her learning infers a lack of control over the process by her and anuncertainty regarding other cognitive aspects of her learning beyond the entail-ments outlined in her metaphor. It is clear that the metaphor did not communicate


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this lack of reflection in Beverly’ s learning processes, that was identified throughother data sources.

Despite Beverly’ s uncertainty regarding the detail of some of the cognitiveaspects of her learning processes, she was happy with these learning processesand possessed a high self-concept as a thinker compared to the majority of herclassmates (table 2). According to her responses on the SCAT, she was confidentin her ability to work things out for herself, to think things through to a conclu-sion, to use her knowledge in new situations and to think well about a wide range oftopics. Beverly perceived less personalization in the classroom than most otherclass members (table 3) and while preferring a slight increase in personalization,her preferred level of personalization was less than that of most other class mem-bers. She did not see a need for the teacher to continually monitor her or otherstudents’ progress, but asserted that some monitoring by the teacher was essential.’ It’ s basically the student’ s responsibility to keep up with what they’ re doing but ifthe teacher sees they are falling behind then they should tell them, ’ ’Look, you’ rebehind. Catch up. You know, you really need to catch up’ ’ ’ . The monitoring roleof the teacher according to Beverly was, therefore, not concerned so much with thedevelopment of understanding but with keeping students on task and up to sche-dule. Beverly’ s high self-concept is also consistent with her perceptions of herexperienced independence (table 3) and, despite preferring less independence,her preference for more independence in the classroom than the majority ofother students. Overall, she enjoyed being in the chemistry class and, while pre-ferring less independence than she perceived was present, was satisfied with theclassroom setup and was actively engaged in using its flexible arrangement to suither learning agenda.

In this class you can do a prac whenever you want to, or watch a video. It’ s left up toyou to decide. I prefer it this way. I’m fairly happy with the way things are. Cos if yougo home and do some homework and you do some questions that you don’ t under-stand, when you come into class you can ask the teacher about it, instead of the teachersaying, ’We’ re doing a prac today’ , and then you don’ t have the opportunity to askquestions that you need to ask for that day.

Beverly asserted that developing her metaphor was a valuable exercise for her.’ It made me sit down and actually think about things I hadn’ t previously thoughtabout, about how I actually did learn. I’ve never had to describe how I learn toanybody before’ .

Discussion and implications

This study shows that, at Year 11 level, it is possible for students to employmetaphors to describe themselves as learners in their chemistry classroom.Furthermore, each metaphor and its entailments are congruent with each student’ sview of their role as a learner, their learning processes and their classroom envir-onment perceptions and preferences elicited using complementary qualitative andquantitative techniques. Beverly and Debbie disclosed different understandingsregarding their roles as learners in the chemistry class. Their metaphors weresensitive to, and highlighted, different prominent facets of their understandingwhich each held to be significant at the time of the research.

The metaphors used by students support the view (Lakoff 1994: 211) thatmetaphors are not merely linguistic expressions but ’ontological mappings across


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conceptual domains’ as they sanctioned the ’use of source domain language andinference patterns for target domain concepts’ . As well as being interpreted at thefiner level of discrete mappings, e.g. bits of apple being units of knowledge, thestudents’ metaphors were also representative of the broader ’ event structure’ meta-phorical concept proposed by Lakoff (1994) in which processes, e.g. learning, arecharacterized cognitively using metaphor in terms of space, motion and force.Under the umbrella of this broader conceptual framework, changes are conceivedof as movements, actions as self-propelled movements, purposes as destinations,means of learning as paths, difficulties as impediments to motion, expected pro-gress is a travel schedule, and long-term purposeful activities are journeys. Bothstudents subscribed to learning as a journey, with Beverly making more progress inreaching her destination by using learning processes that enabled her to function ina more independent manner than Debbie. Debbie’ s maze metaphor conveyed animage of her being confined, lacking direction and lost on her learning journey.Further investigation of the entailments of her metaphor highlighted the restric-tive influence that her lack of means for individual learning had on her learningprogress. While each reader’ s interpretation of these students’ metaphors isgrounded in his or her own experience, the event structure metaphorical conceptand its expression as ’ learning is a journey’ positions the metaphors within auniversal framework where they can be similarly interpreted by many people.

Each student’ s metaphor was selective in its disclosures regarding the stu-dent’ s view of their role as a learner. Neither metaphor communicated all detailsregarding the students’ learning processes, representing only fractions of thephenomenon they were asked to describe. Less prominent images and concepts,e.g. those related to the social aspects of learning, were not communicated in themetaphors. This result might have been anticipated, as the selective nature ofmetaphor has been well documented (Bartel 1983, Dickmeyer 1989). To obtainmetaphors describing more specific aspects of students’ learning roles and pro-cesses, e.g. their problem-solving strategies, it may have been appropriate to pro-vide specific referential frameworks, as in the manner of Berry and Sahlberg(1996), or to provide more specific instructions when asking students to devisetheir metaphor. More specific instructions would seek to ensure that studentsfocused on their understanding of the target concept and sought to capture theessential aspects of that understanding in an appropriate source concept thatentailed those characteristics. Such instructions might, however, have resultedin expressions more classified as analogies in which the mappings are more trans-parent and the interpretation more obvious. Additionally, not all students willfocus on the same aspects of the concept they are seeking to describe using meta-phor. Each student will interpret the target concept according to their understand-ing of that concept and, because that understanding will differ between students,their metaphor will only provide insights into their individual interpretation of thetarget concept. Therefore, it is necessary to triangulate the information profferedby students’ metaphors with other data. Accordingly, metaphor should be seen asan additional, not sole, means of eliciting student perceptions regarding teachingand learning within a cohort of research techniques. Another alternative to theproblem of metaphor selectivity is to do as Tobin (1990, 1993c) did with teachers,and obtain from students a set of metaphors to describe their practice. Such a useof metaphor would build a more encompassing picture of students’ views of learn-ing and their roles as learners.


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Despite the limitations of metaphors and the need for those using them torespect those limitations, they remain useful in eliciting information not easilytapped using other techniques. Gurney (1995), in a study of metaphors used bypreservice teachers, concluded that metaphors convey elements of mood, roles,attitude and beliefs as they apply to teaching and learning. Similarly, the meta-phors of Debbie and Beverly also conveyed similar elements, although, as pre-viously outlined, not all elements were evident in either metaphor. For example,Debbie’ s metaphor clearly entailed a mood of confusion and uncertainty whichstemmed from a lack of efficacy in a new learning environment. Her learningstrategies were no longer useful in her new context. Her confused mood is con-sistent with that reported of other students in studies where teachers haveattempted to shift classroom practice from that rooted in transmissive expectationsto that underpinned by social constructivism (Baird and Mitchell 1987, Byrd andDoherty 1993, Hand et al. 1997). In those studies, the students also preferred tohave their learning directed by the teacher by way of notes from the blackboard orprecise answers to questions. They too identified a need for greater teacher controlto prevent confusion regarding their understanding of concepts.

Beverly’ s metaphor highlighted the industrious and instinctive nature of herlearning role and provided a window into understanding her beliefs about thenature of knowledge. Her attitude as a relentless consumer of chemistry knowledgewas also entailed. Consistent with a constructivist interpretation of informationprocessing, learning for Beverly was a process in which incoming information was’ reorganized and integrated with existing knowledge’ (Meyer 1996: 156). Beverlywas a more adept self-regulated learner than Debbie, with a more developedmetacognitive knowledge (Flavell 1979) of her learning strategies and the use ofprior knowledge in learning. Both students were identical in terms of their percep-tion of their use of a surface approach to learning, and it was the differences intheir perceptions of possession and use of achieving and deep approaches that setthem apart (see table 1). The assertions drawn from the students’ metaphors andother methodologies support the contention that Beverly used deep and achievingapproaches more than Debbie did. A combination of deep and achievingapproaches represents ’ an interested search for meaning and personal relevancewith a carefully organized and syllabus oriented strategy to achieve’ (Biggs 1987:15). Debbie openly subscribed to predominantly employing surface approaches tolearning in her attempts to obtain higher grades, while Beverly understood theneed to employ deep and achieving approaches to personalize and understandinformation in her search for meaning and resultant higher grades. However, itis interesting that Beverly reported using surface achieving approaches to the sameextent as Debbie. The repetition and mechanical rote learning associated with suchapproaches have, in Western countries, been viewed as inappropriate for the devel-opment of conceptual understanding (Watkins and Biggs 1996). Yet, Beverly’ smetaphor and other data clearly indicated that she was concerned with developingconceptual understanding. This further reinforces our previous assertion that thestudents’ metaphors do not communicate all aspects of their learning processes.Marton et al. (1996: 82) investigated how it was possible for Chinese learners, whowere directed to memorization, to demonstrate high achievement in tasks requir-ing detailed conceptual understanding. They suggested that such learners usedmemorization predominantly as a means to ’deepen and develop understanding’ .It is possible that Beverly used surface learning strategies in such a manner.


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Surprisingly, Beverly admitted to a lack of reflection on her learning pro-cesses. As Beverly was a successful student, this admission was not expected.Her lack of metacognitive reflection and recall, yet detailed metaphor regardingher role as a learner, is consistent with Winne’ s (1995) conclusion that self-regu-lated learning includes both deliberate and non-deliberate forms of cognitiveengagement with learning tasks. Learning about how one learns and obtaininginsights into oneself as a learner may be incidental to one’ s learning tasks, andthe resulting knowledge may be less orderly than conventional discipline boundknowledge (Candy 1991). It may be possible that Beverly’ s lack of reflectionresulted from satisfaction with her past success and the resultant confidence inthe efficacy of her learning strategies within the context of her current schooling.High levels of motivation have also been suggested as causes for some studentsengaging more thoughtfully in learning tasks and developing an understanding oftheir learning processes and learning roles (McCombs 1988, Pintrich et al 1993).Beverly’ s high level of motivation, as evidenced by her interview and observationaldata, may therefore also have influenced the development of her learning pro-cesses, as she sought to achieve at consistently high levels in past classrooms.

This research further supports the contention that metaphor is a powerfulmeans of reflection (Kottkamp 1990), with both students highlighting the valueof devising their own metaphor. Elaborating their metaphors provided the oppor-tunity for the students to engage in metacognitive reflection on their learning, tograpple with their understanding of their learning processes, and to convey theirunderstanding of some elements of their learning processes using concepts under-stood by others.

The students’ distillation into metaphors of their conceptions of their learningprocesses and their roles as learners enabled them to make their personal beliefsand images explicit, available for discussion, and the focus for further reflectivedialogue with the teacher. If classrooms are to be sites for developing self-regu-lated learners based on constructivist principles then, because ’discourse contri-butes to the construction of systems of knowledge and beliefs’ (Fairclough 1992:64), the members of that community must share a common language that enablesthem to cultivate familiarity, custom or intimacy with regard to learning practicesvia their discourse. Macdonald (1994) found that it was necessary to help studentsdevelop a language of learning, and when the development of such a language hadbeen facilitated, students became increasingly engaged in metacognition and con-sidering ways to improve their learning. Teachers, as well as talking with studentsregarding conceptual development of science concepts, need to be able to talk withstudents regarding the processes they use to develop their understanding of theseconcepts. Providing opportunities for students to share and discuss their meta-phors with each other is a further means for engaging them in metacognitivereflection regarding their learning processes and their perceived roles as learners.

Conclusion

The metaphors that students use to describe their views of themselves as learnersand the learning processes they use have been shown to be useful in providing alanguage for making such views explicit. Further, the entailments of students’metaphors were found to be congruent with data collected using other techniques,showing that the metaphors were not just linguistic tropes but were credible


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expressions of tacit knowledge. Using metaphors can enable students and teachersto develop a common language to begin conversations about students’ learningprocesses and their roles as learners, and thus lay the foundations for an ongoingdiscourse about improving learning. Generating their own metaphors can enablestudents to gain insights into their learning processes and in so doing act as ameans of developing their metacognition.

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using metaphor to probe students' conceptions of chemistry learning

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