Abstract
According to Bullough (J Teach Educ 42(1), 43–51, 1991), metaphors can be viewed as a mirror of teachers’ professional identity. This article reports what kind of metaphors university teaching assistants (TAs) at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics in the University of Helsinki, Finland, use for teacher’s role. As a first phase of a longitudinal study, we analysed 35 TAs’ metaphors using Beijaard, Verloop and Vermunt’s (Teach Teach Educ 16, 749–764, 2000) model of teacher identity and metaphor manual for implementing this model (Lofstrom et al., Categorisation of teacher metaphors – Manual for implementing the Beijaard, Verloop & Vermunt Teacher Knowledge Base Model. Manual for NorBa project, 2011). Most of the TAs’ metaphors were categorized as didactics expert or as self-referential. Also subcategories were analysed, and potential new subcategories found. The results also suggest that training can have an influence on the metaphors TAs use to describe their role as a TA.
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