Metaphor in Mind : Programming Teachers' Knowledge and Beliefs in Action

Abstract: Programming has become an integral component of technology education around the world and is an important part of Swedish curriculum reform and classroom teaching. This thesis aims to explore relations between programming teachers' knowledge and beliefs about programming teaching and how it is enacted in their practice. In response, three studies were designed to investigate teachers' knowledge on three analytical levels: metaphorical expression, meaning, and understanding. The research relies heavily on triangulation and draws on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and the Refined Consensus Model (RCM) for Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) as an analytical framework. Data consists of metaphorical expressions in four educational texts, three classroom observations and interviews, and eighteen online video clips. Metaphors were analysed by deploying the Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP), Metaphor Identification Guidelines for Gesture (MIG-G), and Procedure for Identifying Metaphorical Scenes (PIMS), respectively. Study 1 revealed that programming metaphors (designated in uppercase) can be categorised as being either related to the function (e.g., PROGRAMMING IS BUILDING, or DATA IS A PHYSICAL OBJECT) of the computer, or the intention of the programmer (e.g., "jump between code lines", or "tell the system that..."). In addition to confirming that many of the metaphors in Study 1 are employed in classroom teaching, Study 2 shows the teachers use of metaphor in gestures when teaching programming. For example, a teacher might hold an "object" while speaking about a programming concept, and thereby expose the use of the metaphor A PROGRAMMING CONCEPT IS A PHYSICAL OBJECT. The study also found that the teachers frame their teaching in relation to building, instructing, mentoring, and problem solving. Study 3 explored spatiality of a teacher’s metaphorical expressions. Findings illuminated that the teacher’s utterances rarely display connections between programming concepts and spatiality. Overall, the thesis identifies key metaphors contained in texts, speech, and gestures in the programming classroom. The research also shows how the teachers enact teaching differently, thus implying salient connections between their knowledge, beliefs, and action.