Enacting Conceptual Metaphor through Blending: Learning activities embodying the substance metaphor for energy

Abstract

We demonstrate that a particular blended learning space is especially productive in developing understanding of energy transfers and transformations. In this blended space, naturally occurring learner interactions like body movement, gesture, and metaphorical speech are blended with a conceptual metaphor of energy as a substance in a class of activities called Energy Theater. We illustrate several mechanisms by which the blended aspect of the learning environment promotes productive intellectual engagement with key conceptual issues in the learning of energy, including distinguishing among energy processes, disambiguating matter and energy, identifying energy transfer, and representing energy as a conserved quantity. Conceptual advancement appears to be promoted especially by the symbolic material and social structure of the Energy Theater environment, in which energy is represented by participants and objects are represented by areas demarcated by loops of rope, and by Energy Theater's embodied action, including body locomotion, gesture, and coordination of speech with symbolic spaces in the Energy Theater arena. Our conclusions are (1) that specific conceptual metaphors can be leveraged to benefit science instruction via the blending of an abstract space of ideas with multiple modes of concrete human action, and (2) that participants’ structured improvisation plays an important role in leveraging the blend for their intellectual development.

Keywords:

• Embodied cognition
• Conceptual metaphor
• Conceptual blending
• Energy Theater

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supposed by the National Science Foundation [grant number DRL 0822342].

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2015.1025307.

Notes

1. Some of this material appeared previously in Scherr et al. (2012).

2. See Amin (2009) for more examples of the manner in which Feynman speaks metaphorically about energy.