TY  - UNPB
M1  - Doctoral
A1  - Nikolaos, Christodoulou
ID  - discovery10020326
N2  - Studies of metaphors in teaching and learning have underlined the important role of
metaphors in reasoning, but have sometimes failed to show the effect of metaphor on
how scientific concepts are represented, and have sometimes overlooked hidden
metaphors in their attempts to be explicit about how metaphor functions.
This study investigates metaphor in the context of teaching environmental science. It
does not assume any simple correlation between surface linguistic cues and the
presence or kind of metaphor. Two theoretical approaches have been chosen,
Systemic Functional Linguistics (M. Halliday) which sees language as a social
construction of meaning, and Image Schema (M Johnson and G Lakoff) which has
developed in cognitive science and cognitive linguistics. These two approaches are
used to discuss examples of metaphors from a number of lessons which have been
observed and video-recorded, and in a variety of textbooks used as resource materials
in teaching environmental science.
The choice of environmental science as the subject matter arises from two of its
distinct characteristics. One is the fact that ideology triggers and shapes the interests,
decisions and choices of materials, issues, arguments, reasons, etc. But there is
nothing like one unique ideology, on the contrary conflicts of different ideologies
raise differences about what will be selected and how it will be represented. At this
point there is a special role taken on by metaphor. Metaphors provide the means for
creating differences and similarities, thus bringing together or keeping apart
ideologies. Second, the teaching of environmental science does not appear as the
teaching of science only, bounded from anything else, but is a blend of accounts of
scientific and commonsense knowledge. Metaphors appear at the overlapping points
where this blending takes place.
It is not the purpose of the thesis to question, or to contribute to, the theoretical
perspectives adopted. Rather, its interest is in how these perspectives provide, each in
their own way, insights into the nature of the discourse of teaching environmental
science, and thus to raise questions about its effectiveness.
UR  - http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.343562
PB  - Institute of Education, University of London
N1  - Thesis: (PhD) University of London Institute of Education, 1999.
TI  - Metaphor in the teaching of environmental science.
EP  - 351
Y1  - 1999///
AV  - restricted
ER  -