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Revisiting metaphors for education: a student’s perspective

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Abstract

This study examines metaphors about learning produced by a group of eighteen students at a big public university in Malaysia. The learner perspective is placed within a wider discourse on education in order to explore whether the images employed by the learners to describe their learning reflect the dominant conception of education as “production”. The metaphors supplied by the participants were analyzed and classified into several themes. None of the metaphors generated by the students alluded to the images that link education with “production”. The study contends that the student perspective on education can enrich educational discourse and highlight the previously obscured notions on education and learning.

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Notes

  1. A small sampling size is not uncommon in qualitative research studies on educational metaphors that focus on the teachers’ or students’ perceptions (see Allard 2004; De Guerrero and Villamil 2001; Farrell 2006; Levine 2005).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Locked Bag 2073, 88999, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia

    Larisa Nikitina & Fumitaka Furuoka

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  1. Larisa Nikitina
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  2. Fumitaka Furuoka
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Correspondence to Larisa Nikitina.

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Nikitina, L., Furuoka, F. Revisiting metaphors for education: a student’s perspective. Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. 12, 311–318 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-010-9143-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-010-9143-8

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