Analyses of Latvian mathematics teachers’ metaphors: preliminary
results
Sample
390 Latvian mathematics teachers of grades 7-9.
294 represent general education program (75.4%), 96 from minority education
program (24.6%).
390 teachers filled in the survey
and 353 of them (90.5%) presented also the
metaphor.
The final results were inserted into database as the following table:
Respondent code
2221205
2311101
2311102
2311103
2311104
Metaphor code
00001
00100
00100
00010
00100
Emotional tone
1
1
0
1
0
Emotional tone (0-neutral, 1-positive, 2 –negative)
Inter-rater reliability
Categorization of metaphors by two raters corresponded in 65% of all cases.
Results:
Qualitative analysis of the metaphors

Teacher as subject expert
The most common metaphors of subject expert were source of knowledge and
transmitter of knowledge. The teacher in these metaphors was described as an
intelligent person who knows a lot about his/her subject and students can learn from
them. In some metaphors it was emphasised that teachers have to improve their
knowledge all the time.
Other popular examples were also a book (guide book, encyclopaedia) from which
students can take knowledge; the only question is whether students want to learn.

Teacher as didactics expert
The teacher is described as a person who can help, advice, show an example for
students but she/he cannot do anything instead of them. The teacher tries to make
teaching/learning process as attractive as possible. Examples: guide, map, helper, one
who shows the way, gardener, instructor.

Teacher as pedagogical expert
Teacher is a person who makes everybody feel comfortable and nice at school, helps
to solve their problems. The main task for these teachers is to develop students’
personalities not to teach them definite subject. Examples: friend, sunbeams, the
second mother, the sun. Connotation of these metaphors is mainly positive.

Self-referential
Teachers are working very hard, often lack time for themselves. Teacher’s work is
very complicated; teachers should possess many different skills and emotional
intelligence. Examples: bee, ant, lighthouse, chameleon.

Contextual metaphors
In these metaphors teacher’s job is described as difficult, teachers have to struggle for
or against something all the time. Examples: life, actor, giant.
Quantitative analysis of metaphors
Distribution of metaphors used by Latvian teachers is presented in the following table
and figure:
Category of metaphor
Number (percents)
Self-referential
104 (30%)
Didactics expert
92 (26%)
Contextual
14 (4%)
Pedagogical expert
37 (10.5%)
Subject expert
18 (5%)
Hybrid
86 (24%)
Unidentified
2 (0.5%)
50
40
30
20
10
0
30
24
26
10,5
4
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The most frequently used kinds of metaphors were self-referential, didactics expert
and hybrid metaphors.
24% of all Latvian mathematics teachers provided hybrid metaphors. In 17 hybrid
metaphors were combined 3 different kinds of metaphors but in 3 hybrid metaphors
provided by Latvian mathematics teachers were found even 4 different kinds of
metaphors.
The structure of these hybrid metaphors is represented in the following table:
Structure of hybrid metaphors
Contextual +self-referential
Pedagogical expert+self-referential
Pedagogical expert+contextual
Didactics expert+self-referential
Didactics expert+pedagogical expert
Subject expert+pedagogical expert
Subject expert+self-referential
Subject expert+didactics expert
Subject expert+didactics expert+self-referential
Didactics expert+pedagogical expert+self-referential
Didactics expert+pedagogical expert+subject expert
Subject expert+didactics expert+pedagogical expert+contextual
Subject expert+didactics expert+pedagogical expert+self-referential
Pedagogical expert+self-referential+contextual
Number
5
3
2
5
24
16
1
9
1
2
14
1
2
1
When hybrid metaphors were split into parts and added to the corresponding (pure)
categories, the results were following:
Category of metaphor
Self-referential
Didactics expert
Contextual
Pedagogical expert
Subject expert
Number (percents)
124 (27%)
150 (33%)
23 (5%)
100 (22%)
62 (13%)
100
80
60
40
33
27
22
20
13
5
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If we count together metaphor categories presented in pure metaphors and hybrid
metaphors, the most frequently used category of metaphors is didactics expert, then
follows self-referential metaphors and pedagogical expert metaphors.
There was also analysed connotation of metaphors (emotions expressed in
metaphors).The results were as following: in most cases the connotation was defined
as neutral, it means that the teachers did not express any emotions in description of
his/her metaphor. Almost equally frequent were metaphors with negative (13%) and
positive (12%) connotation.
Emotional tone
neutral
positive
negative
Number (percents)
267 (75%)
41 (12%)
45 (13%)
13%
12%
Neutral
Positive
75%
Negative
Examples of metaphors expressing:

negative emotions: camel, parrot, waitress, tamel of tigeres.

positive emotions: friend, one who brings light, beautiful flower garden.

neutral: helper, organiser, guide.
There was noticed the tendency that negative emotions were mainly expressed in selfreferential metaphors.