Abstract
Beliefs are psychological constructs potentially driving a teacher to make pedagogical decisions and act. In this study, the metaphor construction task (MCT) was utilised to uncover beliefs about teaching and learning science held by 110 pre‐service science teachers participating in the standard‐based teacher preparation programme. Overall, the participants’ dominant metaphor categories were teacher as nurturer/cultivator, as knowledge provider, and as superior authoritative figure. The findings from descriptive comparisons did not show meaningful patterns of metaphors in association with the factors of gender, study major, or class level. The MCT, incorporated with in‐depth interviews, revealed that out of 30 volunteers, more than half expressed a major change of metaphor after one semester’s participation in the standard‐based programme. The major path of metaphor change was from the teacher as nurturer/cultivator to the teacher as knowledge provider. Pre‐service teachers’ beliefs are metaphorically rooted and culturally influenced. The implications regarding the utilisation of MCT, modification of teacher beliefs, and science teacher education are also discussed.
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