“Metaphor”: An apt metaphor for teaching

I’ve recently been conducting case study research with a few secondary-level English and social studies teachers. A component of my research involves lesson observations and interviews with these teachers, in which I prompt them to share their thinking about their pedagogical decisions. I’m trying to better understand their pedagogical reasoning in planning and implementing their lessons. One of these teachers is a high school English teacher; let’s call her Ms. Bhatti. Ms. Bhatti uses the concept of metaphor as an organizing big idea for teaching her high school English class. Like a good English teacher, for Ms. Bhatti, metaphor is a figure of speech, but metaphors are also a broader literary device.