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growth. Metaphors illustrated in drawing form can assist teachers to conceptualize their
images of teaching (Black & Halliwell, 2000).
The participants were given a format for illustrating and articulating image and
metaphor during the course of the first interview. During the time between the initial and
final interview, the participants completed the exercise and submitted it to the researcher.
The prompts used can be found in Appendix D. The metaphor statements varied in length
from a brief description to a more detailed account. The illustrations were simple and
rudimentary providing a visual for their statements. The individual metaphors of teaching
and learning will be described in more detail in Chapter Five.
Black and Halliwell (2000) describe the case of one early childhood educator
whose metaphor choice of “teacher as torn down the middle” – happy on one side, sad on
the other, provided insight into her feelings of inner conflict associated with the lack of
recognition in the field of early childhood education (p. 108). Metaphor and image
exercises were chosen as a method of data collection support Eisner’s claim (1991) that
alternative forms of data representation have enormous potential for enhancing
understanding of complex educational phenomena.
Analyzing documents.
Archaeologists reconstruct life in past times by examining the documents left
behind. With modern subjects, documents can corroborate observations and interviews
(Glesne & Peshkin, 1992). When the participants shared documentation from their
project work with children there was a visual representation that supported
contextualization of each case. From these visualizations of children focusing on a