A joyous lifeline in a target-driven job: teachers’ metaphors of teaching poetry writing

Abstract

Drawing on Vygotsky’s notion, developed by Bruner, of learners growing into ‘the intellectual life of those around them’, this paper reports on a small-scale questionnaire survey of teachers’ thinking about poetry writing and their instructional practices of teaching it. Thirty-three teachers, with a range of teaching experience and service, took part in the study. This paper presents, analyses and evaluates the central metaphor of ‘freedom’ used by teachers. This presents poetry writing instruction in four contrasting ways: as freedom to explore personal creativity; as a site of integrated thinking; as a rejection of ‘formulaic writing’; and as freedom from curricular ‘directives’. The paper argues that these metaphors indicate considerable personal investment by teachers of poetry and that they consider the teaching of poetry writing to have impact as much on themselves as on pupils.

Keywords:

• metaphor
• poetry
• teachers
• writing
• creativity

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Myra Barrs, Sue Dymoke, Andrew Goodwyn, Debra Myhill, Jane Spiro and Morag Styles for their comments.