Browsing by Subject "Metaphor"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Healing the War Metaphor: Common Medicinal Plants and the Human Immune Function
    (2013-05-31) Smith, Carolyn
    Metaphors of war are common in medical discourse, reflecting a violent paradigm that influences our thoughts and behavior. Diseases are perceived as a threat that we must kill. Examples in herbal medicine are examined as a way to understand how our immune system works on a more complex level in order to soften the battle paradigm. Unconscious reliance on metaphors of war may prevent us from identifying cognitive obstacles that inhibit understanding of our bodies, systems of medical treatment and our relationship to the larger environment as well.
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    Narratives in teacher professional development and metaphors facilitators live by
    (2011-11) Ernst, Stacy A.
    Narrative Inquiry immerses participants and researchers in relational examination of shared lived experiences. Using narrative as both the phenomena and method of study (Connelly & Clandinin, 2000), I sought to uncover metaphors as embodied and enacted in the storied experiences of four professional developers facilitating teacher learning in the Cultural Relevance in Science Pedagogy (CRISP) action research network. The overarching question for the inquiry was: What metaphors are lived (embodied and enacted) in the practice of professional developers when working toward cultural relevance in science pedagogy? Additional questions were: How do metaphors lived in predominant academic discourses, shape facilitators’ thoughts and actions? What other kinds of metaphors influence educational researchers’ academic discourses and facilitators’ conceptions of teacher professional development? How does collaborative work with facilitators to identify metaphor in their practice contribute to a) facilitator professional learning and b) teacher professional development research? Field texts negotiated with each facilitator entailed: participant observation at local meetings, audio recording of facilitator-led meetings, observation notes, facilitator interviews, transcribed facilitator teleconferences, pre/post surveys, and teacher exit interviews. Using a holistic analytic approach provided by Connelly and Clandinin’s (2006) commonplaces of temporality, sociality, and place, I analyzed the storied experiences of four facilitators; negotiated lived metaphors to highlight elements of each participant’s practice, and re-storied the field texts for presentation in the form of narrative. Participants were engaged relationally throughout the narrative inquiry to assure the metaphors identified represented their lived experiences in CRISP.
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    Our Father which Art in Heaven: conservative christian protestants‘ perceptions and meanings of gendered family metaphors for God.
    (2010-05) Zaloudek, Julie A.
    This study employed a sample of 575 Protestants to examine how Protestants perceive God in family roles by looking first at what roles God is perceived in and if gender, controlling for age, will predict perceiving God in specific family roles. God was most often perceived as a father, husband/groom, mother, and brother for the whole sample. However, when dividing the sample by gender, this did not hold true for the men who saw God first as father followed by brother, mother, and husband, in that order. Gender was significantly related to seeing God as a husband/groom when controlling for age. The second part of this study used a sub-sample of 18 mostly Conservative participants to explore how they perceived the nature of God in those family roles. God as father was seen in these three ways: a controlling, distant father; a kind, traditional father; and a modern, flexible father. God as mother was seen in a more traditional way, although participants came to the conclusion that they actually think of God as a mothering father or more generally as a parent. God was also seen as a brother, though this was less developed. God (usually as Jesus) was also experienced in five husband-type roles which include: tender and intimate lover, passionate and desirous lover, companionable partner, sacrificial and forgiving partner, and providing and protecting husband. Many connections between family relationships and family based God images were found.