Metaphors for learning and doing mathematics in advanced mathematics lectures

Abstract

The metaphors that students form and encounter have been shown to exert a powerful influence on how they think about mathematics. In this paper, we explore the linguistic metaphors about learning and doing mathematics that were prevalent in 11 advanced mathematics lectures. We present four metaphor clusters that were common in the corpus that we analyzed: Learning Mathematics is a Journey, Doing Mathematics is Work, Mathematics is Discovery, and Presenting Mathematics is a Story. We conclude the paper by discussing the implications of the metaphors that mathematicians use and students hear in their mathematics courses.