‘Hitting a brick wall’: using conceptual metaphorical theory to explore teachers’ conceptions of learning in Computer Science

ABSTRACT

The metaphors used by teachers to explain the nature of student learning and student difficulty can reveal a great deal about how teachers conceive the teaching and learning process. This is an important area of research as it can shed light on how they see their role in the learning process and how they should intervene to assist students in difficulty. Drawing on conceptual metaphorical theory, this paper explores how high school teachers described student learning by examining the metaphors they drew on to talk about student learning. The research found that the teachers drew primarily on metaphors associated with a journey when describing student learning. The paper argues that the employment of such metaphors can limit teachers’ responses to situations where students experience challenge and difficulty. It is further argued that teachers need to reflect on the use of such metaphors (and the accompanying essentialist language) and consider the affordances offered by employing alternative metaphors to describe student learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Conceptual metaphorical theory
• teacher education
• student learning
• threshold concepts

Introduction

As learning in schools continues to migrate towards more student-centred pedagogies, teachers can face classroom experiences that pose novel challenges to them, particularly as students engage in more self-directed tasks and teachers venture into pedagogies of which they may have limited experience (Aliusta & Özer, 2017; Olofson & Garnett, 2018). In such pedagogies, students frequently experience challenges in their learning as they confront dilemmas and problems at the limit of their understanding or abilities. Such scenarios increase when learning shifts from being concerned with the delivery of pre-defined content (often to a largely passive group of students) towards more student-centred pedagogies, where the content and nature of the tasks are less defined as they become increasingly determined by student interest (Doyle, 2008; Weimer, 2002). These pedagogies are frequently characterised by learning situations where students are engaged in problem-based, investigatory-type learning scenarios. While there are undoubted benefits for student engagement, motivation and learning through the use of such strategies (Keiler, 2018), how teachers conceptualise such learning experiences can strongly influence how they engage with students during this learning process. This can ultimately determine the educational value of the process as there are different roles teachers can adopt in such learning environments (Tamim & Grant, 2013).

Given the importance of this area, this paper explores how teachers describe student learning and in particular how they talk about student difficulties in understanding subject content. While educators may struggle to articulate their conceptualisation of student learning and how they overcome challenges, the metaphors they use in their talk can act as a window into how they view the learning process. Conceptual Metaphorical Theory (CMT) has been used to explore the metaphors used by teachers to describe their current practice and the conceptual metaphors for teaching to which they aspired (Alger, 2009). Therefore, an analysis of their talk through the theoretical lens of CMT can advance this issue. Drawing on the interviews with eleven Computer Science (CS) teachers in upper secondary education in the Republic of Ireland, this paper explores how teachers talked about teaching and learning and challenge in student learning. CS was chosen partly because it is a subject that is associated with high dropout rates (Pappas et al., 2016), often because of the difficulty experienced by students in understanding key concepts (Boustedt et al., 2007), and partly because within the Irish post-primary schooling system it is a recently introduced subject which emphasises collaborative problem-based learning. This approach is a marked difference from the more didactic teacher-centred approaches of more traditional subjects on the curriculum. The study aimed to explore what metaphors were evident in the teachers’ talk as they spoke about student learning in an attempt to identify what this revealed about how they conceived student learning.

Literature review

What is CMT?

CMT focuses on the use of metaphors in talk and text and aims to unearth what this reveals about how we conceptualise experiences. Lakoff and Johnson’s (2003) influential text in this area notes that our use of metaphors is not an occasional occurrence, instead, our use of metaphor is pervasive in everyday life in language, thought and action. In their description of many types of metaphors used in everyday talk and text, Lakoff and Johnson (2003) highlight ontological and orientational metaphors as examples of how metaphors are used to understand our world. Orientational metaphors, for example, are metaphors that are related to spatial orientation where one’s line-manager could be seen as ‘above them’ or one could consider putting a problem ‘to the side’ temporarily to work on other aspects. Lakoff and Johnson (2003) highlight the pervasiveness of these orientational metaphors where being happy is ‘up’ and being sad is ‘down’. Ontological metaphors are ways of viewing events, activities, emotions, etc. and also provide an insight into how we conceive the world. Lakoff and Johnson (2003) provide the example of how we use metaphors to present inflation as an entity through the use of phrases such as;

Inflation is lowering our standard of living.

If there’s much more inflation, we’ll never survive. We need to combat inflation.

Inflation is backing us into a corner.

Inflation is taking its toll at the checkout counter and the gas pump. (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003, p. 27)

Considering how metaphors help frame and define our experiences and interpretation of events, it is important to recognise the dynamic nature of this interaction. That is, metaphors are drawn on to make meaning from new experiences, but these acquired metaphors are subsequently employed to frame and define future experiences. In this way metaphors can be of great help in the meaning-making process, but on the other hand, they can also act as a filter that limits possible alternative interpretations and conceptualisations of new experiences (Alger, 2009). It is for this reason that Sfard (1998) argued that metaphors were a two-edged sword – on one hand they make abstract thinking possible, but on the other hand, they confine human imagination within the limits of former experience and conceptions. Therefore, as Patchen and Crawford (2011) note, ‘metaphors are not mere poetic embellishments in language; they have the potential to affect their users’ perceptions and actions and to be affected by them’ (p. 287).

Tannehill and MacPhail (2014) note that numerous research studies have used metaphor analysis to investigate how teachers conceptualise their practice. This body of work has explored these metaphorical conceptualisations based on the view that teachers’ ways of thinking and acting can be heavily influenced by the metaphors they draw on (Sfard, 1998). As a result, metaphor analysis has been used to raise awareness about teachers’ beliefs and assumptions so that these views can be interrogated and challenged (De Guerrero & Villamil, 2002) and ultimately improve their practice.

Analysing the metaphors employed by teachers is particularly important when one considers the taken-for-grantedness of many of the metaphors used to conceptualise teaching and learning. Hager (2008) observes a ‘common-sense’ story about learning in popular thinking dominated by acquisition and transfer metaphors where learning is the acquisition of knowledge and the teacher’s role is effectively transferring this knowledge to the learners. He surmises that, ‘the “common-sense” story about learning probably underpins the public perception that successful performance in quiz shows is a good measure of learning’ (p. 680).

The dominance of key metaphors in teachers’ thinking was also identified by Patchen and Crawford (2011) who identified that metaphors of learning tended to cluster around either acquisition and production metaphors or alternatively participation metaphors reflecting an epistemological divide in education between teacher-centred and student-centred approaches to learning. Sfard (1998) note a similar divide within educational research between what she referred to as the ‘acquisition metaphor’ and the ‘participation metaphor’ and further notes that, ‘The acquisition metaphor is so strongly entrenched in our minds that we would probably never become aware of its existence if another, alternative metaphor did not start to develop’ (p. 6).

De Guerrero and Villamil (2002) situate these commonly employed metaphors by teachers within socio-cultural theory highlighting that thinking and understanding is mediated by cultural artifacts and metaphors as linguistic devices can be seen in this way. For that reason, it is not surprising that there appears to be a high level of commonality in terms of the metaphors employed by teachers when asked to talk about teaching and learning as they are drawing from this shared repertoire of language that is a characteristic of how teachers talk about teaching and learning. They further add that, ‘metaphors are part and parcel of the theoretical jargon inherited by teachers as they are exposed to the literature in the field’ (p. 97).

As well as exploring the broader metaphors used by teachers to describe teaching and learning there has also been research that has explored teachers’ descriptions of their own classroom practices and the metaphors that they draw on to conceptualise it. Most notably work by Munby (1987) into the metaphors used by two teachers when talking about aspects of their professional work found that, through the use of various metaphors, teachers presented the lesson ‘as a moving object’ as the following examples show:

“they’re always a step ahead of the other classes because everything goes so smoothly,” “we move along faster,” ”we’ll probably even back up a little bit,” “these kids need a push in every direction,” ”in that particular class, uh, we go very slow,” “if he’s lost . . . he’s just going to get further behind,” “they like to get off of the subject on to different topics,” ” we didn’t get to that,” “we didn’t even get past those ten sentences today,” ”I get carried away sometimes,” “if I go right back to the basics,” ”I hate going over that two and three (times),” “I might move on,” ”it was time to move on very quickly,” “I’m pushing and backing up as far as I can,” ”I thought the class went fairly slow,” “I just start from scratch,” ”he’s kind of a slow starter,” “we went through it real quick,” “she was slowly plowing through it,” ”I finally got to the point,” and ”they get behind.” (Munby, 1987, p. 384)

This type of research has done a great deal in advancing our understanding of the metaphors used by teachers. This study goes a step forward and specifically explores the metaphors employed by teachers to describe points in lessons where students experience challenging learning situations. These are often points when students attempt to understand important new ideas that are central to the subject – frequently referred to as threshold concepts.

Threshold concepts

Threshold concepts are seen as crucial topics or ideas recognised as particularly important in the understanding of a subject. Rountree and Rountree (2009) observed that the threshold concepts model has become fashionable, having gained popularity since 2003 when it was first put forward (Meyer & Land, 2003). The concept has now been explored in many different areas including Biology, Mathematics, Economics, Accounting and CS (Barradell, 2013). In defending the importance of the concept, Boustedt et al. (2007) argued that if students fail to gain an understanding of these threshold concepts within CS, this can lead to frustration, poor subject understanding and ultimately increased student dropout. Importantly, threshold concepts are not seen as being typical topics or ideas within a discipline that require understanding, instead they are recognised as having a unique place in the development of the students’ overall understanding of the subject. They have been described as opening up students to different ways of thinking about the topic. For that reason they are seen as causing an irreversible change in the way a topic is conceived (Meyer & Land, 2003). This transformative way of understanding the topic leads to deeper understanding of the subject that would not be possible otherwise. Rountree and Rountree (2009) note that certain aspects of the curriculum are pivotal and act as ‘portals’ to new understanding, mastery of which is seen as a rite of passage for all students of the discipline. Achieving an understanding of these threshold concepts can help students see connections with other aspects of the discipline that transcend individual components of the subject (Boustedt et al., 2007).

Inherent within the idea of the threshold concept is the idea that they are ‘tipping points’ in the students’ understanding and that without ‘passing’ them, students will not progress. If, as has been highlighted in previous work, student learning is seen as a journey that aims to pass these ‘thresholds’, it is easy to see how this language facilitates (if not even determines) the use of related metaphors and therefore frames how teachers conceive the nature of student difficulty. To show how this manifests itself in particular subjects this paper provides an example from teachers of CS.

The case of Computer Science (CS)

CS is increasingly offered as a school subject across the globe (Ottestad & Gudmundsdottir, 2018). While frequently introduced to schools to address human capital concerns related to an adequate supply of graduates for the CS sector, it is also seen as a subject that can develop broader generic skills such as problem solving and analytical skills for all students (Fluck et al., 2016). Due to the nature of the subject content, students commonly engage in project-based learning where they have an opportunity to apply knowledge in classroom projects, thus the subject affords many opportunities for independent, self-directed learning and is therefore a particularly good subject to explore as an example in this regard. More active learning methods are seen as effective ways to engage students and effectively teach CS, particularly the element of programming that is seen as challenging (Sentance & Csizmadia, 2015) as it adopts a constructivist approach to meaning making. In addition, the social and collaborative element of learning is also effective as using paired and group activities in the learning process is also seen as an effective strategy within the subject (Van Gorp & Grissom, 2001). A systematic review of the literature by Vihavainen et al. (2014) also highlights the benefits of active and collaborative strategies in the teaching of introductory programming.

Despite the growth of CS as a school subject in recent years, it has suffered for a long time from perceptions that the subject is difficult and suited to students with particular aptitudes (Wang et al., 2016). This perception has contributed to poor uptakes and the attraction of particular cohorts of students to the subject (Guzdial, 2020). In addition, the perception of the subject as challenging and difficult has led to an acceptance of the relatively high dropout rates that characterise the field (Pappas et al., 2016). Whether there are particular aptitudes best suited for the study of CS is a matter of debate, but what does appear to be clear is that there are many threshold concepts within CS that students need to master in order to develop their knowledge (Boustedt et al., 2007). Thus, this is another reason that this subject area is a good example to take to explore teachers’ conceptualisations of student challenge.

It is common for students who struggle to achieve an understanding of threshold concepts central to a subject to experience frustration, disillusion and ultimately subject drop-out. How teachers conceptualise the nature of these problems can reveal a great deal about how they are likely to intervene. Therefore, paying attention to the language used by teachers to describe these occasions is important. For example, students struggling with these threshold concepts are frequently referred to as ‘getting stuck’. Metaphors such as these appear to be pervasive in teachers’ talk about students in difficulty. For example, speaking about the challenges experienced by students in CS, Boustedt et al. (2007) argued that:

It is useful to know that students tend to become stuck on a particular concept, but the deeper understanding of the student experience—how students get unstuck, and why some students get unstuck (or perhaps never get stuck at all) while others remain stuck—should provide ideas on how to help students to make progress toward understanding that concept. (Boustedt et al., 2007, p. 507)

Similarly, exploring threshold concepts in CS, Rountree and Rountree (2009) argued that the most substantial work on identifying threshold concepts in CS has been on, ‘examining the responses of students in Computer Science to questions about where they got “stuck” while studying’ (p. 3).

Methodology

Background of the study

The research reported here formed part of a larger study exploring the roll-out of a new upper-secondary level subject of CS in forty schools in the Republic of Ireland. The teachers in these pilot schools were originally teachers of other subjects who expressed an interest in being involved with the introduction of the subject into their schools. Throughout the two years of the study, the teachers participated in ongoing professional development involving both online and face-to-face workshops. The workshops focused on developing their content knowledge and pedagogical expertise through collaborative participatory exercises that emphasised a social constructivist approach to learning as this mirrored the approach set out in the new subject curriculum where collaborative group-based tasks are a key element of the subject in classrooms. This mixed group of both male and female teachers were invited to complete a questionnaire after the first year of the project to capture their experience of teaching the new subject. In the second year of the study in-depth case studies on a sample of ten schools were also undertaken. This sample was purposefully selected to be representative of the larger group of forty schools. It therefore contained schools with different patronage type, both rural and urban, schools of different size, single-sex and mixed schools and schools designated as economically disadvantaged. As part of these school-based case studies, the teachers were invited to participate in a one-to-one semi-structured interview seeking their experiences of teaching the new subject. In line with the institutions’ research ethics protocols, all participants were initially written to and invited to participate in the study. As part of this invitation information on the study and a consent sheet were also provided. The interviews took place in each of the ten schools at a convenient time. The interviews ranged from twenty minutes to one hour in duration and were audio-recorded and subsequently transcribed. Eleven teachers were interviewed in total as one school contained two teachers involved in the initiative.

The interview transcripts were initially thematically analysed using Braun and Clarke’s (2013) stages of thematic analysis to ascertain the teachers’ experiences of the subject roll-out and their experience of the professional development programme delivered. However, this research focused on the specific parts of the teacher interviews where they talked about their experiences of teaching CS in the classroom and the pedagogical challenges they encountered. In analysing this section, the relevant text was firstly read for familiarisation by the author. Following this all metaphors used in the teachers’ talk were identified. These included a range of different types of metaphors including orientational metaphors and ontological metaphors as the examples below highlight:

Orientational metaphors

• When they [the students] get something working, I try to go over the top with sort of positive praise. (T2)

• So there are times when I’m just hitting a brick wall. (T4)

• A lot of them [the students] do really get into it. (T5)

• Very seldom they [the students] call me over if they get stuck. (T8)

Ontological metaphors

• These students need to work extra harder to try and catch up. (T2)

• We just had to do a big sprint. (T1)

• Back in August, that we’d go from something from the beginning and they did like it and it was a nice kind of change of pace. (T5)

• I think we’re just moving too quickly through things. (T11)

However, the categorisation of these metaphors was not clear-cut as there were several examples where it could have been argued that they were both orientation and ontological in nature. For example, one teacher, when talking about assisting students in difficulty, said that, ‘it’s only when they’re really running into difficulties that I need to step in’ (T6). This could be seen as both an example of an ontological metaphor where learning is seen as a race or sprint (‘running into’) but also as an orientational metaphor as the teacher jumps ‘in’ to help. A quote from Teacher 3 highlights the use of similar metaphor types. When talking about students learning material they responded, ‘so I’ll just ask them to figure it out. And as they get stuck, I can jump in and go, Oh actually here it is’ (T3). Again, this highlights the interweaving of different types of metaphors in their talk. Another challenge in the identification of the metaphors in the teachers’ talk was that it was not clear whether, on some occasions, teachers were simply using a figure-of-speech that was commonly used in their professional sphere or whether their talk reflected how they conceptualised the process. This dilemma of trying to detangle figures of speech from people’s metaphorical conceptualisations has been discussed by Munby (1987) who, when exploring the metaphors used by two teachers to talk about their work, highlighted this challenge:

… we cannot uncover why [the teachers] select such metaphors from the many accessible candidates if, indeed, there is selection. Certainly, in some ways, the choice of language is presumably a function of its aptness and this again signals that the metaphors represent something of how these two teachers view their professional worlds. If choice does not enter the picture then we are bound to acknowledge that the language used represents a more widespread social habit of referring to lessons as moving objects or to communication as a conduit. In this view, [the teachers] may be seen as following a folk tradition of ways to speak about the events of school. (p. 397)

While it is undoubtedly the case that the teachers in this study draw from a common language and ‘folk tradition’ when talking about their teaching, there is a level of choice available to the teachers when drawing on the range of metaphors available. Therefore, attempting to separate figures-of-speech from conceptual metaphors is not possible given their complex relationship. For that reason, all metaphors were included in the analysis. A total of 57 metaphors were identified through this process across all teacher interviews.

Having identified all metaphors in the selection of text from the 11 transcripts, the metaphors were subsequently categorised into similar areas regardless of their type. A limitation of this analysis is that the metaphors were solely categorised by the author. However, these identified metaphors were re-checked and re-coded to ensure interpretations of data were consistent. The nature of the dilemmas faced in the categorisation of these metaphors is also described in a transparent way (see above explanation) to strengthen the trustworthiness of this process.

Results

Learning as a journey

By far the most common metaphor used by the teachers was learning as a journey. Metaphors of a journey were mentioned 39 times throughout the 11 interviews making up nearly 70% of the metaphors employed in their talk. Numerous terms used reflected this conceptualisation. For example, phrases such as ‘going beyond’, ‘getting to a stage’, reaching a plateau’, ‘making progress’, ‘flying’ and ‘park for a while’ indicates that teaching (and learning) the subject was presented as a somewhat linear journey towards a specific end point. Amongst the journey metaphors there were also metaphors that suggested this journey was more of a race or sprint rather than a leisurely journey. On some occasions this race was presented as a race against external expectations and demands outside the classroom related to ‘covering’ the curriculum and preparing for terminal examinations at the end of the programme (in Ireland these are external examinations set by the education ministry and determine entry to university). On other occasions, this race/sprint was an internal race within the class group where students were at risk of ‘falling behind’ their classmates and therefore needed to ‘catch up’. For example, speaking of students that joined the class later than other students, Teacher 3 described the advice given to the students that emphasised the need to work fast to ‘catch up’:

… they’re [the students] kind of told, listen, you got to, here you’ve got to work fast and hard, like for those ones particularly because they’re, they’ve so much to catch up on. (T3)

Drawing on a similar metaphor of pace and speed, Teacher 10 explained how the students were struggling because they were ‘going through’ the material quickly;

the 5th years are struggling a bit more with some of the kind of loops and stuff, but I think I’m going through it faster. I think you always have this issue when you’re doing it for the first time with a group, you go so slowly because you’re kind of going through it and the second time you know it better so you go through it quicker. (T10)

Problems along the journey

The journey/race metaphor had a level of continuity as other metaphors were also used when talking about challenges that students experienced in the subject along this metaphorical journey or race. By way of examples, when describing the challenges that students had with some of the key topics and concepts, students were described as getting ‘bogged down’, ‘hitting brick walls’, ‘running into problems’ and ‘getting stuck’. Resolving these difficulties was described as ‘overcoming hurdles’. In the following excerpt from one of the interviews the teacher describes students hitting ‘the IF-ELSE plateau’ (the IF-ELSE statement is a key concept in programming). A notable aspect of the language is the metaphorical construction of this plateau that the students ‘never go beyond’ suggesting this linear up-hill journey towards a particular destination:

I’ve definitely noticed that students hit the IF-ELSE plateau. Do you know, they can do print statements, they can kind of do an input, then they get IF-ELSE and that’s as far as they ever get. And when you do, when you look at a project, it’s an IF-ELSE and that’s it, you know, you might get an odd list if you’re specifically asked for it, but they just never go beyond a very basic IF-THIS-THEN-THAT

Another notable aspect of the above quote is how the teachers’ conceptualisation of the learning journey intersects with views of student ability where the journey ends prematurely for some students, i.e., ‘never go beyond’. The use of such metaphors perhaps reflects a more essentialist rather than a developmental understanding of student ability. Challenges were seen as the limits to some students’ abilities and only some were perceived to have had the ability to overcome the difficulty of the task. The following excerpt from the interview with Teacher 4 highlights this dichotomic way in which student ability is conceptualised with students being categorised as either having an aptitude and ability or not suited to the subject:

Some students to me don’t have the aptitude at all. Now maybe that’s me and my attitude, that I should be believing everybody can do this. But I, I come across students and there’s no sense of logic. Oh God, how does this not make sense to you? And can I explain it any other way like you know. … there are times when I’m just hitting a brick wall and I don’t know how to do it differently or to explain it differently … But the, the other kids, the more able kids, mightn’t understand it first time, but they will after a while … (T4)

A similar dichotomic way of presenting the students’ ability was echoed by another teacher when explaining how some students ‘grasped’ the content whereas others ‘really struggled’. In this quote the teachers’ metaphorical construction of the lesson and learning as a journey or race intersects with their views of students’ abilities. Those with ability are ‘excelling’ whereas others ‘struggle’.

Some [students] are grasping it, some are really struggling. … I’d say we probably have about a third of the class who are excelling and they’re probably going to go straight in and be amazing computer scientists. We’ve a third of the class that are probably, uh, will get by, I mean they’ll, they’ll put the work in and we’ve a third of the class that I think are just, you know, really, really weak and really struggling, you know, really struggling with the coding aspect of it. Um, and you know, no matter what we do, we’ve try to put all the supports in … (T2)

On other occasions students were labelled as either ‘weak’ or ‘strong’ which aligns with the dichotomic way of viewing students as either ‘grasping’ it or ‘struggling’. It must be said however, that the use of this language perhaps more reflects the common figures-of-speech of traditional schooling that had a focus on the ranking and categorisation of students and does not necessarily reflect a negative attitude or perception of the students themselves. On the contrary, the level of effort made by the teachers to support the students during this initiative was very impressive and indicates a deep professional commitment to their work. What is more important here is the use of these pre-existing metaphorical conceptions and how they influence teachers’ conceptions of their work. A surprising aspect of these findings is that teachers had adopted a social constructivist approach to their pedagogy in line with the subject curriculum requirements where students were encouraged to collaborate and learn about key concepts through task and problem-based learning, but they nonetheless drew on these traditional metaphors to describe learning. This mismatch between their actual pedagogical practice and the metaphors they drew on is explored in the following section.

Discussion

Exploring the origins of the metaphors

Exploring the metaphors used by teachers when talking about their practice can help highlight how they conceive their roles and how the conceptualise the learning process amongst their students. Whilst acknowledging the small-scale exploratory nature of this research, the study has highlighted that the dominant metaphor drawn on was that of learning as a journey or race. This reflects the work of Munby (1987) where it was found that the dominant metaphor was of the lesson as a moving object. In exploring the possible reasons behind the dominance of this metaphor there are several possible, sometimes contradictory, reasons. Firstly, the dominance of this metaphor could reflect the external demands on the teacher to meet national curriculum requirements and the high-stakes nature of the terminal exam which is used for matriculation to university education in Ireland. This may result in more linear metaphors of ‘journey’ and ‘sprint’ to be adopted as they perhaps best reflect how it is conceived by teachers given the demands of ‘covering’ the course content in the time allotted. Another factor that may have led to the adoption of these dominant metaphors could be the traditional focus on content within curriculum in Ireland (McCormack et al., 2020). Hence, these metaphors may be more reflective of the nature of the education and examination system in the Irish context than the teachers’ personal conceptualisation of the learning process. There is also the fact, as alluded to by Munby (1987), that the teachers are also to some extent drawing on the common discourse and figures-of-speech that are traditionally used to describe teaching. Therefore, it could also be argued that the teachers are not purposefully selecting the use of such metaphors and are instead parroting prevailing discourses. This again would suggest that, notwithstanding the presence of subject specific metaphors with some subject disciplines, a broader universal set of metaphors to describe student learning may exist that is drawn on by teachers when talking about their practice.

The presence and continued use of these traditional metaphors is surprising for two reasons. Firstly, there have been curriculum changes in Ireland that have shifted the emphasis away from content towards a more competency-based understanding of education with a focus on more open learning outcomes (Gleeson et al., 2020) and the CS curriculum is one example. Secondly, the teachers’ classroom practices have changed towards more student-centred approaches and do not reflect the traditional didactic teacher-centred approaches characteristic of other more traditional subject areas. Therefore, there appears to be a mismatch between the teachers’ practices and the metaphors they employ.

This may suggest that, while the teachers’ practices do appear to have shifted towards more student-led pedagogies, they may not have acquired or adopted a new language to capture their changing conceptualisations of learning – hence there may be a lag between changes in practice and changes in language. An alternative explanation could be that there is a gap between teachers’ beliefs and their practices. That is, they have adopted a more student-centred approach to learning and have aligned to the expectations of the new subject curriculum as they are required to deliver the subject in this manner, but that behind this lies more entrenched beliefs about teaching and learning that align with more traditional conceptualisations of teaching and learning. It raises the question as to whether the metaphors used by teachers about teaching and learning reflect the nature of their practice? A possible explanation for this anomaly may be the tensions between wanting to facilitate more student learning approaches in their practice whilst at the same time being bound by expectations from students and parents to achieve high grades in national examinations that determine entry into university courses.

Implications of the study

In this study, the metaphors used to describe when students experienced difficulties drew on the journey/race metaphors where students were seen to have become ‘stuck’ or ‘bogged down’. These conceptualisations of student difficulties have the potential to limit the repertoire of pedagogical responses by the teacher to the situation. The typical response to perceiving someone as ‘stuck’ or ‘bogged down’ is to assist them in becoming ‘unstuck’, as it is perceived that they cannot continue on their journey of learning. In essence these periods of difficulty are seen in a largely negative light as they are seen as impediments to the student’s progress and their expected destination. Seeing these stages of difficulty as undesirable fails to recognise the challenge and difficulty of all learning and feeds into an essentialist narrative about student abilities (Lynch, 1987) and downplays the developmental nature of learning. It also fails to recognise the valuable learning opportunities that such difficulties provide as the focus quickly shifts to helping the student to become ‘unstuck’.

There are fortunately alternative ways in which such difficulty can be conceived. Instead of perceiving the student as being ‘stuck’ on a planned linear journey, it could be alternatively conceptualised as the student meeting a ‘peak learning opportunity’. This could therefore be seen as an opportunity for exploration of a key dilemma or issue, thus maximising the educational growth of the student. This shift in perspective reflects more constructivist understandings of learning where disequilibrium facilitates learning (Fosnot & Perry, 1996) rather than being seen as an impediment to it. In this way ‘getting stuck’ could be seen as expected, welcomed and indeed celebrated.

Conceptual metaphors therefore matter, but to what extent can we change these dominant metaphors? Is it simply a case of adopting a different language? This could help the change process, but changing the language and the conceptual metaphors also requires a change in the context in which the learning takes place. While there is a considerable body of research highlighting the negative effects of high-stakes examinations on student learning and the nature of teaching, particularly on lower income and minority students (see Smyth and Banks, 2012), they continue to be employed in many jurisdictions including Ireland. In this context, it is difficult to see how a change in the language used will result in a change in the nature of teaching and learning if teachers remain subjected to the pressures of curricular requirements and external examination demands.

What can change at a teacher level however is the essentialist understandings of student ability. This is particularly evident within the subject of CS where such essentialist language is common, particularly in relation to female participation (Frieze & Quesenberry, 2013). If challenge is seen as inevitable for some students that are perceived as unsuited to the subject, then student confusion can be interpreted as a sign that a student has reached the limit of their capabilities in the subject. Other students that do not experience similar levels of difficulty are then presented as evidence that there is indeed a particular ‘type’ of student suited to the subject. On the other hand, a less essentialist understanding of student abilities and a valuing of challenges experienced by students can provide opportunities to explore understanding and consider the dilemmas and topics from different perspectives. This can help develop a deeper and more multi-dimensional perspective on the nature of the problem the student is experiencing. In such settings, students are less likely to be dismissed as ‘just not getting it’ or ‘not having the aptitude’.

Conclusions

This study set out to explore the conceptual metaphors used by teachers when talking about teaching and learning and was particularly interested in exploring the nature of teachers’ talk in relation to times when students experienced a challenge in their learning. While small-scale and exploratory in nature, and focusing on one subject area, the study nonetheless highlights the prevalence of specific metaphors which it is argued can limit teachers’ responses to the challenge experienced by students. The paper suggests that, despite teachers adopting a student-centred collaborative approach to the teaching of the new subject of CS, the demands and pressures on teachers to achieve good results in national state examinations strongly influence how they metaphorically see the learning process. This suggests that wider systemic changes, beyond pedagogical shifts in practice, are needed to facilitate a broader shift in how learning is conceptualised.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was part of a project supported by Science Foundation Ireland (grant 17/DP/5079) and co-funded under the European Regional Development Fund through the Southern & Eastern Regional Operational Programme to Lero - the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software (www.lero.ie).

Notes on contributors

Oliver McGarr

Oliver McGarr is an associate professor in the School of Education at the University of Limerick, Ireland. He is a former head of the School of Education and works within the area of digital technology and teacher education.