Narrative and Metaphor in Education

Look Both Ways

Michael Hanne, Anna A. Kaal, Michael Hanne, Anna A. Kaal

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429859977
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Human beings rely equally on narrative (or storytelling) and metaphor (or analogy) for making sense of the world. Narrative and Metaphor in Education integrates the two perspectives of narrative and metaphor in educational theory and practice at every level from pre-school to lifelong civic education. Bringing together outstanding educational researchers, the book interweaves for the first time the rich strand of current research about how narrative may be used productively in education with more fragmentary research on the role of metaphor in education and invites readers to 'look both ways.'

The book consists of research by 40 academics from many countries and disciplines, describing and analysing the intricate connections between narrative and metaphor as they manifest themselves in many fields of education, including: concepts of education, teacher identity and reflective practice, teaching across cultures, teaching science and history, using digital and visual media in teaching, fostering reconciliation in a postcolonial context, special needs education, civic and social education and educational policy-making. It is unique in combining study of the narrative perspective and the metaphor perspective, and in exploring such a comprehensive range of topics in education.

Narrative and Metaphor in Education

will be of great interest to academics and researchers in the fields of education and educational policy, as well as teacher educators, practising and future teachers. It will also appeal to psychologists, sociologists, applied linguists and communications specialists.

Part 1

Introduction

Chapter 1

Looking at both narrative and metaphor in education

Michael Hanne and Anna A. Kaal

Introduction

Around 1980, thinkers from disciplines as diverse as philosophy of history, psychology, and literary theory converged to make the broad claim that human beings make sense of the world primarily by means of their capacity to assemble information in the form of stories. In the words of psychologist Theodore Sarbin, “Human beings think, perceive, imagine, and make moral choices according to narrative structures” (1986, p. 8). In very much the same period, a cluster of linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists came to strikingly similar conclusions about metaphor. Linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson, two of the founders of conceptual metaphor theory, asserted that “our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” (1980, p. 3). These parallel claims were taken up over the following decades in a host of other disciplines, though the narrative perspective and the metaphor perspective were, by and large, employed separately (Hanne, 1999).

Theorists and practitioners in education have been strongly influenced by these cognitive and narrative turns – indeed, one of the founders of modern narrative studies, psychologist Jerome Bruner, focused especially on education and learning theory. Since the 1980s, the terms “narrative” and “metaphor” have insinuated themselves into many areas of educational innovation. Testimony to the status of narrative in educational research is the existence of the Narrative Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). While there is no equivalent special interest group for metaphor, a significant band of researchers in the Association for Researching and Applying Metaphor (RaAM) have taken a major interest in education (Low, 2010; Littlemore, 2016). Nevertheless, the narrative strand and the metaphor strand in education have, as in other disciplines, mostly been pursued separately.

At the same time, many scholars have concluded that narrative and metaphor are in fact intimately related. In the words of law professor Linda Berger: “Metaphor and narrative reassure us that things hang together, providing a sense of coherence to the patterns and paths we employ for perception and expression” (2010–2011, p. 275). Indeed, it has become clear that there is considerable value in studying the interweaving of narrative and metaphor in different fields and, over the last decade, scholars in disciplines as varied as medicine, politics, and the law have held conferences and published volumes of essays on the rather different ways in which narrative and metaphor are employed in combination in their fields under the general heading of the Narrative/Metaphor Nexus (Hanne, 2011; Hanne, Crano, & Mio, 2015; Hanne & Weisberg, 2018; see: narrativemetaphornexus.weebly.com).

The present collection of essays and the conference which generated it (held at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, in March/April 2017) have brought together for the first time some of the most influential among those who have worked with both narrative and metaphor in dealing with key issues in education (Kieran Egan, Hans Fuchs, Martin Cortazzi and Lixian Jin, and D. Jean Clandinin) for discussions with exponents of many areas of educational theory and practice who have previously worked mostly with one or the other but are now willing to apply the two perspectives in tandem. Our goal in this volume has been to combine the two perspectives in the systematic study of a wide range of topics in educational theory and practice.

Throughout the essays, our authors have come up with a variety of vivid descriptions of the relationship between narrative and metaphor. Sarah Penwarden observes that metaphor relates to narrative as “a still image relates to a moving image.” Volha Arkhipenka and Svetlana Lupasco declare that they are “two sides of the same coin,” while Gwyneth James describes them as operating “hand-in-glove.” (Note the need each author had for a metaphor to describe such an elusive connection and the potential of each metaphor to illuminate a different facet of the phenomenon.) Hans Fuchs and his colleagues write of stories as the “roads” and metaphors as the “bridges” that make up the map of the town. In negotiating the busy traffic in the discourse of any sphere of social interaction, we suggest that it makes sense to “look both ways,” that is: to employ the narrative perspective and the metaphor perspective in combination.

Broad themes taken up by educationists

Given the extreme diversity of the research conducted under the banners of both narrative studies and metaphor studies, it seems worthwhile to briefly identify some of the themes which have proven most relevant to discussions in education: understanding, creating identity, framing, and envisaging other realities by narrative and metaphor.

Understanding by narrative and metaphor

Our narrative faculty is a radar-like device by which we scan the world around us and “grasp together” events, characters, physical and social context, agency, sequence, causality, and motivation, to turn them into an interpretive story (Ricoeur, 1990, p. 8). Key figures in narrative studies have argued that it is primarily through narrative “telling” that we come to “know” the world. Jerome Bruner (1985) distinguished between “paradigmatic knowing,” which uses reasoned analysis and logical proof to reach unambiguous general hypotheses, and “narrative knowing,” which we construct through the stories we tell about lived experience that help us to make sense of the complexity and ambiguity of human existence (Polkinghorne, 1988; Riessman, 2008).

Metaphor involves a kind of category play, by which we conceive of an item from one (target) domain in terms of an item from another (source) domain. It is crucial to conceptual thinking, and the major device we employ to make sense of complex or abstract phenomena. So, for example, the intricacies of transport arrangements in a city are referred to as a “network” while the metaphor of the “code” is at the heart of modern understanding of genetics (Montgomery, 1996). Discourse analytical studies show that such metaphorical mappings are part and parcel of our everyday communication and manifest themselves in our language, gestures and other forms of expression (e.g. Cienki & Müller, 2008; Semino, 2008). Whereas the pair of terms “source domain/target domain” is used by scholars from the conceptual metaphor tradition inaugurated by Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999), an alternative pair “vehicle/tenor” is used by those from the linguistic metaphor tradition, initiated by I.A. Richards in the 1930s. Authors in this collection use either pair of terms, according to the tradition within which they are working.

Creating identity through narrative and metaphor

A major argument in contemporary narrative studies (Bruner, 1985, 2002) is that we construct, maintain and modify our sense of self in narrative terms. It is the library of stories we carry with us which reminds us who we are. Equally, it has been suggested that our sense of our collective identity (ethnic, national, local, religious) is largely constructed of the narratives we share with others in our community (Connerton, 2010; Hammack, 2015). A narrative perspective on identity is particularly important when we come to think about issues of agency and power.

We exchange stories with others in almost every social interaction: introducing ourselves, listening to and passing on news, recounting our symptoms to the doctor, puzzling over political events, justifying our actions. Equally, it is often by means of metaphor that we share our conceptual and emotional experiences. We may accept the story someone tells us, but equally we may disbelieve or not be convinced by it. A metaphor is an invitation to its audience to share the perspective of the person who utters it (Cohen, T., 1979), and we may accept that invitation or, indeed, actively resist it (Steen, 2018).

A significant strand of research to have emerged over the last 30 years in the social sciences is “narrative inquiry,” which uses a range of texts, such as interviews, autobiographies, and accounts of life experiences, to research and understand how people make meaning of their lives in story form (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). Many exponents of narrative inquiry see metaphor as a vital ingredient in the stories people tell about their lives, to convey both how they understand their experience and how they feel about it.

Framing through narrative and metaphor

Narrative and metaphor are both “framing devices.” The teller of any story selects items, perspectives, and connections which lead to a particular interpretation. While this selection process illuminates certain features of a situation, it is likely to occlude others. In Bruner’s words, “Stories are surely not innocent” (2002, p. 5). Metaphor, too, is a framing device, which both illuminates and conceals, so alternative metaphors represent different ways of conceptualizing a phenomenon. In their courtroom narratives, prosecution lawyers may argue that they have presented a “rope of evidence” and that the cutting of one strand will not reduce its strength, whereas the defence will argue that it is, in fact, a “chain of evidence,” such that, with the breaking of a single link, the whole case will collapse (Hanne & Weisberg, 2018, p. 4).

Perhaps not surprisingly, metaphorical and narrative frames play a major role in public debate and policy-making. They are capable of recording and interpreting existing reality but equally of envisaging possible and ideal realities. Donald Schön proposed the notion of the “generative metaphor,” highlighting the interplay between the metaphor selected to describe a social problem and the policy narrative that is chosen to resolve it (1985). See, for instance, the policy narratives generated by the use of the “crime as a virus” metaphor (Potter, 2018). Lori D. Bougher (2015) argues that they are heuristic devices, which allow us to “simplify the complex by focusing attention to particular attributes of an object, issue, or event, while masking others” (p. 252). There is widespread recognition that public discourse in any field may be captured by deceptive narratives and warped metaphors and that we should take heed not to accept the imaginative “frame” through which a topic is viewed as the exclusive way to do so (Larson, 2011).

Envisaging other realities through narrative and metaphor

In scrutinizing and critiquing existing narratives and metaphors in any discipline, we can create new narratives and coin fresh metaphors which may generate new ways of thinking. The value of proliferating and comparing the implications of new narratives and metaphors is increasingly acknowledged.

Both narrative and metaphor are productive devices by which we make connections: narrative connects events to make a story; metaphor connects domains to create analogy (Ricoeur, 1990, p. ix). Bougher discerns a reciprocal relationship: “First, metaphor can provide a structure that guides narrative, infusing texts with symbolic meaning… . Just as metaphors can elaborate certain points in a narrative, narrative can give meaning to a mix of seemingly unrelated metaphors” (2015, pp. 254–255).

The themes of knowing, creating identity, framing, and envisaging other realities through narrative and metaphor will be discussed in a variety of ways for educational theory and practice throughout this collection of essays. The essays are grouped under six broad headings, which we introduce here.

Narrative, metaphor, and learning

Our collection begins with a cluster of essays focusing on how children (and indeed all human beings) learn and how we conceptualize learning. It was more than 30 years ago that Jerome Bruner and Kieran Egan (with whose retrospective essay this collection opens) asserted that children process their experiences primarily as stories and that storytelling should therefore be at the heart of the teaching process (Bruner, 1985; Egan, 1988). Subsequently, educators have come to argue that teaching in narrative form is relevant not just at elementary level, but in secondary, university, and lifelong learning (e.g. McDrury & Alterio, 2003). A related strand of educational thinking argues that education should concern itself explicitly with assisting students to author their own life narratives (Conle, 2003), especially to develop their own “voice” for narrating. It has been suggested by several educators, notably Michael Mateas and Phoebe Sengers, that the development of “narrative intelligence” should be a prime objective of formal education (2003).

Metaphor has also been identified by a handful of educationists, including Egan, as a key device for engaging students with learning. While it was earlier assumed that it took a certain maturity for children to comprehend, let alone generate, metaphor, it has increasingly been recognized that metaphor is a fundamental way for even small children to manage new information or experiences (by analogy) and to envisage abstractions (Winner, Rosenstiel, & Gardner, H., 1976; Gambell, 1977; Winner, 1997; Egan, 1997). Lynne Cameron explored in detail the use teachers make of metaphor to introduce new or difficult material and to express values and attitudes (2002). Jeannette Littlemore has looked at the potential for misunderstanding when teachers use metaphor with adult, especially international, students (2016). Egan and others propose a focus on metaphor and, especially, on encouraging children to be creative by imagining fresh metaphors which assist them to engage emotionally with a topic.

Kieran Egan is remarkable for being one of the earliest proponents of both narrative and metaphor in teaching, alongside other cognitive devices. His Teaching as Storytelling (1988) devoted almost as much attention to metaphor as to narrative, and in his subsequent writing, notably The Educated Mind, narrative and metaphor have maintained a central position. In Egan’s words: “Learning to follow a narrative is a vital intellectual accomplish...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Author biographies
• Part 1 Introduction
• Part 2 Narrative, metaphor, and learning
• Part 3 Narrative and metaphor in teaching a range of disciplines
• Part 4 Narrative, metaphor, and the politics of education
• Part 5 Narrative and metaphor in intercultural education
• Part 6 Narrative and metaphor in the education of teachers and counsellors
• Part 7 Narrative inquiry needs metaphor, too
• Index