Conceptual Metaphors and Apprenticeship Paths as Levers for Professional Development and Learning

This paper presents a case study that analyzes how university apprenticeship experience—that Italian students of Education Sciences are asked to do during their Bachelor’s Degree program—can be conceived as learning path to help them become aware and (begin to) question taken-for-granted and culturally assimilated assumptions about professional practice, identity and the role of the educator. A particular attention is given to the methodological implications related to the adoption of the technique of metaphor analysis to support learners in recognizing the beliefs about their own profession and, eventually, changing them. Metaphor analysis was used both as a learning activity and a heuristic to guide processes of professional development. Metaphors were used to: (a) uncover tacit ways of making meaning, (b) name experiences, and (c) imagine new possibilities. We address, finally, the main images of role emerged from groups work to describe the representations of what the educator should do, who she/he is and which are the aims of her/his work. The savior, the scientist, the farmer, the sculptor, the good Samaritan, the militant, the transgressor are some of the delineated images that our participants analyzed to understand reasons and issues behind their own practices.