Metaphorical Self-conceptualizations Of English Teacher's Role In A Chinese Senior High School

While perceptions and/or beliefs of university English teacher's role have been widely researched,the roles held by English teachers in fundamental education are under-researched.Underlying factors contributing to teachers' personal constructions of high school English teacher's role remain entirely unclear.People's beliefs or perceptions are normally abstract and intangible and thus at times difficult to describe by some participants.According to the Conceptual Metaphor Theory put forward by Lakoff & Johnson(1980),metaphor as a cognitive tool enables participants to concretize their abstract conceptions of their roles as an English teacher.It was thus decided in the present study to employ metaphor as a cognitive mediational tool to explore how participants conceptualize their roles as an English teacher through metaphor.The purpose of the study is threefold.First,it aims to generate knowledge of English teachers' conceptualizations of teacher' role at a Chinese high school via elicited metaphor analysis.Second,the study sets out to preliminarily investigate whether and to what extent metaphor-oriented activities in the form of metaphor generation task plus guided self-reflection interview can influence individuals' conceptualizations of teacher's role.Third,the study seeks to identify the possible factors that can impact teachers' personal constructions of English teacher's role.The present study collected thirty English teachers' conceptualizations of teacher's role from a region-level model high school in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region via a metaphor questionnaire survey and subsequently interviewed sixteen of them on a voluntary basis.Elicited metaphor analysis and qualitative inductive analysis were employed to analyze the data.By analyzing teachers' metaphorical conceptualizations of teacher's role,nine conceptual categories were identified: Teacher as learning guide,Teacher as individualized instructor,Teacher as knowledge provider,Teacher as co-worker,Teacher as encourager,Teacher as interest arouser,Teacher as nurturer,Teacher as authority,and Teacher as learning environment creator.It can be concluded from the data that the metaphor-oriented activities could impact the participants' self-perceptions of teacher's role in at least four ways:(a)encouraging teachers to reflect their teaching,(b)prompting teachers to think critically about personal teacher's role,(c)gaining a clear and deep understanding of teacher's role,and(d)assisting teachers in identifying problems and/or obstacles of their roles as an English teacher.Besides,the factors that potentially impact teachers' conceptualizations of teacher's role included such internal factors as teachers' English learning experiences,teachers' teaching experiences,and teachers' personal traits,and such external factors as student factors,China's college entrance examination,colleagues,school's requirements for teachers,students' parents,and the attitude by the local society towards English learning.The present study also identified the methodological problems of metaphor analysis and discussed possible solutions to the problems.Overall,the results suggest that metaphor can work reasonably well in eliciting individuals' perceptions of English teacher's role.The present study provides solid evidence for the feasibility of researching and applying metaphor to Chinese high school English teacher's role.