"Reel" Metaphors for Teaching

Abstract

Examines how the teaching–learning process is portrayed metaphorically in popular films. Teacher–learner relationships in popular films are often conveyed through images that excite, entice, and appeal to a more general set of human desires, such as the need for power, guidance, nurturing, and loving. Which existing "reel" metaphors of the teacher–learning process that dominate American popular culture and how these understandings may manifest themselves in trite, formulaic ways as well as in semantically deeper and more creative ways are examined. Teaching as dogmatic taskmastering, teaching as heroism, and teaching as intimacy are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)