From Implicit Intention to Exquisite Expression: Finding Metaphors for Who We Are and What We Do

Abstract

This article is designed to capture our musings on metaphors as we explore our own understandings of our professional identities: a philosopher-storyteller, a psychologist-poet, and a story-seeking-musician. We are teacher educators and researchers each with our own identity and sense of self. We are all women who work as colleagues, but we come from different educational backgrounds, have various research interests, and have our own unique approaches to teaching. We have discovered that during our ongoing conversations about our ‘‘professional’’ identities as teacher—educators, we have this one thread in common: when it becomes difficult to express who and what we are all about, we all reach for metaphors. As we engaged in dialogue about metaphor, we found that we could agree on a holistic and metaphorical identity that permeates all that we do, one that transforms the way we view ourselves and our work of teaching, learning, and researching.