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Metaphors Underlying the Improvement of

Teaching and Learning
Richard G Tiberius
Dr Richard Tiberius is an associate professor with the Division of Studies in Medical Education,
Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto.

Abstract
Metaphors structure our understanding of the process of teaching and learning and
thereby influence our efforts-both research and practice-to improve this process.
Moreover, there is evidence of a shift in dominance from one metaphor to another
which will have profound implications for the emerging field concerned with the
improvement of teaching and learning.

Introduction
Historically,activitiesdevoted to the improvementof teaching and learning (ITL) have
been practical efforts, with little reflection on their conceptual foundation. David
 Metaphors Underlying the Improvement of Teaching and Learning 145

Hawkridge (1981) characterized the motto of such activities in the early seventies as
‘get on with it, don’t think about it’. Although a number of philosophic articles have
appeared in the literature since then, much work remains to be done toward an
understanding of the conceptual base for this emerging field (Hawkridge, 1981;
Megarry, 1983).
The purpose of this article is to uncover the metaphors underlying our thinking
about teaching and learning and to examine the impact of these metaphors on efforts to
improve the teaching and learning process. I will identify, by means of a review of the
conceptual papers on the field and by the use of examples, two metaphors of teaching
and learning, a dominant one and a second, competing one. Then, I will support the
contention, using similar evidence, that we are experiencing a shift from the dominant
to the competing metaphor. Finally, I will consider some implications of such a shift
for future ITL research and practice.

Improvement of teaching and learning (ITL)

Since this paper is concerned with all efforts directed at the ‘improvement of teaching
and learning’ (ITL), I have intentionally chosen this broad phrase rather than any of
the more restrictive terms in common use today. Educational development was a strong
competitor since it is the title of a comprehensive bibliography of the field by John
Clarke (1981). However, in the computer database ERIC, educational development
refers to education in the developing nations rather than improvement of the teaching
and learning process. Other members of the development family were rejected on the
grounds that they were limited to a particular subset of the educational process:
faculty, organizational, instructional, or professional development (Chadwick, 1973).
ITL as used here is virtually synonymous with educational technology as used in the
journals today, where it means the technology of education (Gagnk, 1968; Saettler,
1978). However, the latter term is still burdened by confusion with technology in
education, that is, the use of slide projectors, audiovisual aids, computers and the like
(Megarry, 1983), despite at least 15 years of argumentation in journals in favour of a
technology of education. (See Chadwick, 1973, for a review of this controversy.) The
same problem applies to the term instructional technology.

Metaphors in education
Green (1971) defines a metaphor as an implicit comparison, one which calls our
attention to similarities between two things by speaking of one thing as if it were
another. One of the most common uses of metaphors in educational literature is in the
construction of new ideas. Such ‘constructive metaphors’, as Green (1971) calls them,
are used to define teaching and learning in new and interesting ways, or to draw our
attention to particular aspects of teaching and learning. Teaching has thus been
compared with fishing (Tom, 1980), coaching (Tharp and Gallimore, 1976), horticul-
ture (Gillis, 1975) and politics (Highet, 1976, pp 75-6). Since constructive metaphors
are usually obvious, they do not obscure the fact that the two things which they
compare may differ in some ways. My intention in referring to these common
educational uses of metaphor is to make it clear from the outset that such metaphors
are not the subject of this paper. My focus is on a species of metaphor that Green (1971)
and others (eg, Pratte, 1981) have described as dangerous, the dead metaphor.
146 British Journal of Educational Technology No. 2 Vol17 May 1986

‘There are many ways to define a dead metaphor, as opposed to a living one. But for our
purposes, it may suffice to say that a dead metaphor is one which we use in thought as though it
were literal. It no longer impresses us as metaphorical. Its inference is so shrouded in custom and
habit, its comparison so covered over by the blind convention of everyday thinking that the
metaphor controls what we think. These are the dangerous metaphors. They frequently obscure
useful philosophical questions that we want to raise and force us to frame our investigations
within unnecessary limits’ (p 62).
Although dead metaphors may no longer impress us as metaphors, they may
insidiously organize our understanding of teaching and learning, and of everything else
in our world. For example, habitual use of such expressions as ‘the wheels are turning’
and ‘I’m a little rusty’ in reference to the mind may predispose us to think of the mind as
a kind of machine and may limit our questions about mental processes to those that are
compatible with machines. One of the difficulties faced by researchers and consultants
in the field of ITL is that they have developed their own metaphors for teaching and
learning long before they entered the field, metaphors which interfere with their
taking a fresh view of the phenomena. Moreover, we are so familiar with these
metaphors that we may be unaware of their influence on our understanding of teaching
and learning. There are few features of our industrialized societies as uniform as early
childhood experience with teaching and learning. In virtually every country in the
industrialized world children spend a large part of their lives inside educational
institutions where they accumulate a vast store of direct experience with teaching and
learning.
Lakoff and Johnson (1980) argue that early, recurrent experience with the nature of
the world leads to the formation of categories which ‘define coherence in our
experience’ (1980, p 230). These categories of experience are held together and
organized-so that we can understand them-by our metaphors. Indeed, they argue
that we live in a metaphorical world: our metaphors are our best construction of
reality, and once formed, tend to structure our future experience, emphasizing some
aspects of that experience while hiding others. If, as Lakoff and Johnson (1980) argue,
metaphors are built up from our direct experience, most of us surely have well formed
metaphors for teaching and learning which organize our understanding of these
concepts.

The dominant metaphor underlying teaching and learning: transmission

It appears that the dominant metaphor for the process of teaching and learning is
transmission. According to this metaphor, those who attempt to improve teaching and
learning, ITL researchers and consultants, are viewed as engineers whose goal is the
maintenance and improvement of the information transfer system.
According to the transmission metaphor, the process of teaching and learning is
essentially a transference of information from teacher to students. Although teachers
are traditionally seen as the principal vehicles for this transmission-the ‘senders’-
they are not strictly necessary, and their replacement by teacherless learning packages
has even been considered desirable by some ‘instructional designers’ (the engineers)
(Chadwick, 1973). What is emphasized is the efficient flow of information down the
pipeline to the student. Experience of teaching and learning that is structured using the
 Metaphors Underlying the Improvement of Teaching and Learning 147

transmission metaphor tends to emphasize the process of transmission-packaging,

sending, targeting, receiving-while hiding the relational and interpersonal aspects.
According to evidence documented by Michael Reddy (1979), the ‘conduit’
metaphor (synonymous with what I am describing here as transmission) is illustrated
by more than 100 expressions, most of them common in educational vocabulary, for
example, ‘It’s hard to get that idea across to him’, or ‘your reasons came through to us.’
It would be easy for anyone familiar with contemporary teaching and learning to add
to the list: the delivery of material to the student, students not absorbing it, aims of
education, the student target population.
Common observation provides some rather compelling demonstrations of the
strength of the transmission metaphor for teaching and learning in our society: for one
thing, just observe children playing ‘teacher’. The scene that most of us must have seen
at one time or another is one of a child lining up all her dolls and lecturing them. The
content is missing, but the metaphor has already taken shape through her early
experiences at school (Van Fleet, 1979). Perhaps even more convincing is a
demonstration I have tried many times with adults, always with the expected results:
ask someone to portray the concept of ‘teaching’ using charades. He or she inevitably
pretends to be expounding to an imaginary audience, sometimes throwing in a book or
chalkboard as a prop. In the language of the dominant metaphor, teaching is telling,
and learning is listening.
Paulo Freire (1970) has used the word ‘narrative’ to describe, in dramatic terms, the
process that I am referring to as transmission.
‘A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or outside the school,
reveals its fundamentally narrative character. This relationship involves a narrating subject (the
teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students) . . . Narration . . . turns them [students] into
“containers”, into “receptacles” to be “filled” by the teacher’ (pp 58-59).
In the context of this metaphor the role of the improver of teaching and learning, as
educational engineer, is to maintain the conduit or improve the efficiency of the flow.
To such an educational ‘technologist’, teachers are conduits or transmitters in a double
sense: they transmit information and they implement instructional methods. The ideal
educational method should be teacher-proof: capable of successful delivery of
information, independent of individual differences in teachers.
The transmission metaphor, which I have argued is the dominant metaphor for
teaching and learning in the society at large, is also the dominant metaphor for
researchers and consultants in the ITL field. In their critical review of the literature of
traditional educational technology, Mansfield and Nunan (1978) summarized the .
methods underlying the operation of the educational technologist in this way: methods
of organizing and packaging knowledge, transmitting it by means of appropriate
media selections, and receival considerations. According to Mansfield and Nunan
(1978) what educational technologists seek are rules that state ‘to cause x to happen,
you must do y’. This description sounds remarkably similar to Michael Reddy’s
description of the conduit metaphor.
The second metaphor of teaching and learning: dialogue
Dialogue or conversation appears to be the principle metaphor in competition with
148 British Journal of Educational Technology No. 2 Vol17 May 1986

transmission as the organizer of our experience of teaching and learning. The idea of
education as dialogue goes back at least to Dewey. However, it was not until the late
1970s (Saettler, 1978) that the ideal first began to appear in the ITL literature, as a
reaction to the manipulation of people and things associated with the transmission
metaphor. In a review of the literature emphasizing the importance of the teacher-
student relationship, Hendley (I 978) summarized the ideal teaching and learning
relationship as an alternative to that implied by the transmission metaphor: ‘teachers
and students at their best are inquirers helping one another in the shared pursuit of
truth. . . they are engaged in a common enterprise in which the responsibility for
acquiring knowledge is a joint one’ (p 144).
In this conception of the educational process, teacher and student are viewed as
engaged in conversation. Education becomes an essentially human enterprise that
takes place within a personal relationship.
The distinction between metaphors of transmission and of dialogue has parallels in
John MacMurray’s philosophy of Persons in Relation (1961), and Martin Buber’s Iand
Thou (1970). Both authors distinguish between impersonal and personal modes of
relating to another. The former leads to scientific knowledge about others, according
to MacMurray, while the latter leads to personal knowledge about others. The
transmission metaphor emphasizes impersonal relations while the conversational or
dialogical metaphor emphasizes personal ones.
When our experience with teaching and learning is structured using the dialogical
metaphor, the emphasis is on the interactive, cooperative, and relational aspects of the
teaching and learning, while the transmission of information function may be
downpla yed.
The role of the improver of teaching and learning, according to the dialogical
metaphor, is to facilitate interaction between teacher and learner as partners in the
educational dialogue. The ITL consultant becomes a facilitator whose role is to help
both teacher and learner to bridge the gap between them, a gap which reflects the
separate ‘cultures’ (Morill and Steffy, 1980) to which they belong. Bridging these gaps
means overcoming misunderstandings and difficulties in establishing trust, breaking
through cultural barriers, encouraging understanding and empathy, thereby enhanc-
ing the relationship and ultimately the educational effectiveness of the dialogue.
Hendley’s (1978) picture of joint inquiry may appear overstated since it ignores the
inherent asymmetry of the teacher-student relationship, for example, in situations in
which the teacher’s knowledge is vastly superior to that of the students, such as in
teaching young children how to read. It may be difficult to imagine how such an
asymmetric teaching and learning situation could become a dialogue. However, Paulo
Freire (1970) has developed a highly successful method of teaching literacy in which
dialogue between teacher and student is the key process. Authority over the subject
matter should not be confused with authority over the student. The fact that a teacher
may know vastly more than his or her students about simple addition does notjustify a
narrative teaching method. Instead of merely telling the students that ‘two plus two
equals four’, it might also be important for the teacher to learn, through dialogue with
the students, what the number ‘two’ means to them, what kind of experiences they have
had with combining pairs, and what they call the sum. After all, the object is to help the
 Metaphors Underlying the Improvement of Teaching and Learning 149

student to understand the process of addition and relate it to their experiences, not to
have them memorize a line by rote.

Are the metaphors competing?

Is there any reason to believe that these two metaphors are in competition, or do they
simply reflect alternative ways of organizing one’s understanding of teaching and
learning? To answer this question I will appeal to the characteristics that Kuhn (1970)
attributed to proponents of competingparadigms, since one of the central meanings of
Kuhn’s (1970) concept of paradigm is metaphor.
According to Kuhn (1970), the group of researchers that constitute a field share a
number of commitments to beliefs, values, and metaphors which provide a basis for
their work: the commitments enable them to understand one another, to agree as to
what are worthwhile problems in their area, and what constitutes acceptable solutions
to those problems. ‘Normal’ work in the area could not proceed without such group
commitments. Kuhn originally referred to these ‘shared commitments’ collectively as a
‘paradigm’ (1970) but in later writings (1970; Postscript, 1977) he substituted the
phrase ‘disciplinary matrix’, which he defined as beliefs, models, analogies or
metaphors.
The impact of these shared beliefs (including metaphors), on our perceptions, is
viewed by Kuhn (1970) in precisely the same way as by Green (1971) or by Lakoff and
Johnson (1980): they provide us with both blinkers and visors, both ‘an immense
restriction of the scientist’s vision. . . [who becomes] increasingly rigid’, and a
concomitant increase in detail of information and precision within those areas to which
the paradigm directs the attention of the group (Kuhn, 1970, p 64).
One characteristic that Kuhn ( 1970) attributes to proponents of conflicting
paradigms is their tendency to disagree about the list of problems that must be
resolved. There has in fact been considerable disagreement in the literature with the so-
called ‘traditional’ methods of improving teaching-those aimed at improving the
message, improving the abilities of the teacher to transmit it, or the ability of the
learner to receive it. Bergquist and Phillips (1977), Clifton Chadwick (1973), and Jerry
Gaff (1976) have criticized what they called the ‘traditional’ faculty development of the
sixties and have advocated a new approach. The ‘traditional’ faculty development that
all of these writers described clearly fits a conception of teaching as transmission: it is
an attempt, largely by administrators, to improve the quality of teaching and learning
using the primary methods at their disposal: directing funds and making administra-
tive decisions (sabbaticals, admission and hiring policies). The aim of such administra-
’
tive moves is to improve (a) the quality of the message by improving the expertise of the
‘sender’ through retraining in his or her subject matter, sabbatical leave and
encouragement of research; (b) the effectiveness of the message, by providing faculty
with more time for curriculum development; and (c) the ability of the receiver, through
admissions policy.
Furthermore, preoccupation with technical problems and their solutions by the
early ‘educational technologists’ have been attacked by a host of critics who view such
efforts as ineffective when carried out without consideration of the interpersonal
context (Bergquist and Phillips, 1981; Eraut et al, 1975; Hubbard, 1976; Mansfield and
150 British Journal of Educational Technology No. 2 Vol I7 May 1986

Nunan, 1978; Megarry, 1983; Sanders, 1978; Vargas and Fraley, 1976). For example,
Eraut et aZ(1975) concluded that the normal educational development paradigm was
unsuccessful because it failed to question the goals of teaching, because it depended
upon an authoritarian context, and because it takes as its clients the teachers only
rather than adopting as its ‘primary task the reconciliation of t h e . . . conflicting
interests of all those involved, staff and students’. According to Eraut et al, the
traditional paradigm seldom includes any attempt to find out what the students’ main
concerns and problems really are. The paradigm assumes that concepts and techniques
are the major problem without considering the possibility that the major problem may
be lack of motivation to learn the course arising out of the fact that the course was too
teacher-centred (pp 32-33).
The second characteristic that Kuhn attributes to proponents of competing
paradigms is their tendency to ‘misunderstand’ one another, in the sense that they may
use the same old terms, concepts, and experiments, but with new meanings in new
contexts and in new relationships with each other. An example may serve to illustrate
what is meant by a misunderstanding of this kind. Before observing an episode of
small-group teaching I asked the teacher what he would be attempting to do in the
class. He told me that he has several points he wanted to ‘bring out’ of the class by the
use of a particular questioning technique, and that he would be interested in my
opinion of the effectiveness of his technique. As I observed the class, it became
apparent to me that his technique was indeed effective in bringing out the points that he
wanted to bring out. The students that I interviewed afterward all reported that the
class process consisted of a series of responses to the teacher’s questions, that the
teacher appeared to be looking for certain answers, rewarding those students who
supplied them and ignoring those who did not. But they were divided in their
evaluation of this process. Some of the students liked the class because, as they put it,
‘the questions kept us awake; it’s better than reading the stuff on your own’. Others felt
that the sessions were a waste of time; they felt that the live sessions should be devoted
to answering student’s questions, facilitating problem-solving and thinking, or
providing them with the opportunity to practise group discussion.
What can we conclude about a piece of teaching which is rated both very low by
some students and very high by others? Obviously their evaluation depended on the
expectations of the rater, and ultimately on the conception that the rater held of the
nature of teaching and learning. The teaching was seen as effective-in the sense that it
facilitated learning-by those students who held a view of teaching compatible with
that of the teacher. If I were to evaluate it according to a dialogical model of teaching I
would have many criticisms such as the lack of opportunity for students to ask their
own questions, to define their own interests, or to learn how to initiate their own
learning sequences, since teaching-according to this model-ught to foster dialogue
and encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning. From the
teacher’s own understanding of teaching as the communication of a body of
knowledge, he was successful. There is no way that two groups of students (or
teachers), whose thinking is guided by disparate metaphors, can resolve their
disagreement empirically. Each side may attempt to support its view using the same
observations, since the same facts are seen differently by the two groups; they view their
 Metaphors Underlying the Improvement of Teaching and Learning 15 1

worlds through different selective filters. Proponents of different metaphors do not

confront each other; they talk ‘through’ each other, in Kuhn’s phrase. They are like
people speaking different languages.
My experience with such dichotomous evaluations of teaching is apparently not
idiosyncratic. From a review of students’ rating of teachers, Follman (1983) has
concluded that 20 per cent of teachers are rated both highest and lowest by the students.
It would be interesting to find out whether the cause of these dichotomous evaluations
is a misunderstanding of the type described here.
The final characteristic that Kuhn attributes to proponents of competing paradigms
is their tendency ‘to practise their trades in different worlds’. Proponents of two
different metaphors of teaching and learning ‘see different things when they look from
the same point in the same direction’, to use Kuhn’s phrase (1970, p 150).This tendency
has been illustrated in the previous example. As evidence of its prevalence I can offer
my own experience as an educational consultant: for me one of the exciting aspects of
my role has been in sharing these different conceptual worlds of the teachers. A class
described as ‘unruly’ by a teacher with ‘a message to send’ is perceived as ‘lively’ by
another who is conducting a discussion. A class perceived by one teacher as
‘stimulating’ is observed by another as ‘aggressive,’ and so on.

Is there a shift in the conceptual basis of ITL research?

Although a shift in the metaphorical basis of our understanding of teaching and
learning-and therefore of activities toward the improvement of teaching and
learning-would be one of considerable importance for ITL research, such changes are
difficult to discern during the period in which they occur. Is there a shift in the
metaphorical basis of our understanding of ITL from transmission to dialogue as
Chadwick (1973) and Gaff (1976) have indicated? Once again, Kuhn’s (1970) criteria
for accepting a paradigm appear to be useful in answering this question.
According to Kuhn, ‘The single most prevalent claim advanced by the proponents of
a new paradigm is that they can solve the problems that have led the old one to a crisis’
(1970, p 153). Are there unsolvable problems in ITL research? One critical problem in
ITL research is its inability to come up with universal rules which can assure the success
of teachers’ performances (Cronbach, 1975; McKeachie, 1974; Sanders, 1978; Snow,
1977). If ‘transmission’ has indeed been the dominant metaphor, as I have argued, then
a growing disillusionment with the failure of traditional research may have precipi-
tated a reaction against it.
The second critical problem in this field is stated as follows: there is no function for
the teacher now that the printing press (or programmed learning, or television or
computers) has been invented. The Ancient Greek philosophers had to teach because
this technology was not available then. But today, sophisticated information-
packaging techniques have made the teacher obsolete. It is obvious, by the language in
which this problem is phrased, that it is a concern of those who view teaching as
transmission-both researchers and teachers-who fear being replaced by their own
products or, worse yet, by imported products. In the manner that Kuhn described as
‘normal’ science, the technology of information delivery has steadily advanced to the
point at which a new problem has emerged, the obsolescence of the traditional role of
152 British Journal of Educational Technology No. 2 Vol I7 May 1986

teacher, one that was not imagined while teachers were still essential for the passing on
of information. It is not that the dialogical conception of teaching and learning ‘solves’
this problem. Rather, the problem simply does not arise within the dialogical
conception. People who have organized their thinking under different metaphors in
some sense actually do live in different worlds, populated by different problems.
Of course, teacher obsolescence could be viewed as the ultimate success of the
transmission model, a welcome increase in productivity, a sign that we have reached
the point of advancement of our technology that we no longer need teachers just as we
no longer need blacksmiths because most metal articles are mass-produced in factories.
Yet, in my experience, teachers faced with obsolescence as the logical outcome of their
conception of teaching prefer to loosen their grip on the conception rather than
celebrate the end of teaching. When faced with the prospect of the mass production of
teaching, most of us hold out for a concept of teaching and that includes more than the
transmission of information.
Kuhn (1970) offers a second type of argument for switching from one conception of
teaching and learning to another, which he describes as an aesthetic argument: the new
theory or metaphor ‘is said to be “neater”, “more suitable”, or “simpler” than the old’
(p 155). There is a sense in which the dialogical metaphor is simpler and more adaptive
than the transmission metaphor because dialogue includes the transmission process;
dialogue involves a process of mutual transmission of information resulting from a
negotiation between the teacher and students. The emergence of ‘contract’ theory
(Clark, 1978) in education is perhaps explained by its capacity to provide an
interpersonal context, a negotiation, within which information transfer can become
part of a dialogue. The nature of the message does not change when it becomes part of
an educational contract; the personal understanding under which the message is
delivered changes. The existence of a contract allows the student to take the
responsibility for his or her learning, to control his or her own learning. Thus, in some
sense, conceiving of the teaching and learning process as a dialogue includes the notion
of transfer of information, but goes beyond it to incorporate reciprocal, relational and
contextual variables as well.
The two conceptions of teaching and learning can also be compared along a moral
dimension. The dialogical metaphor seems to have an advantage in societies that value
democracy, individual freedom, and choice. Eraut et a1 (1975) have attacked the
traditional model-which I equate with the transmission metaphor-for not sharing
these values. What the authors advocate seems close to my conception of the dialogue.
Paulo Freire (1970) has supported his well-known pedagogy of dialogue largely on
moral grounds: ‘Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of
information’ (p 67).

Implications for ITL research

A shift in the dominant metaphor organizing our experience of teaching and learning,
from transmission to dialogue, will no doubt influence the emphasis of ITL research
and practice. I would predict that the traditional emphases on the message (curriculum
design), the sender (teaching strategies), and the receiver (student admission pro-
cedures) will face increasing competition for the attention of researchers from
 Metaphors Underlying the Improvement of Teaching and Learning 153

emphasis on the reciprocal-interactive nature of teaching and learning, exemplified by

a focus on the teacher-student relationship, the interpersonal climate, and a new
perspective on feedback. A few examples will clarify what I mean by these future
emphases.
The teacher-student relationship can be viewed as a kind of selective filter which
colours teachers’ and students’ perceptions of one another (Silins, 1982). The
dialogical conception of teaching focuses attention on this relationship as central to the
educational effectiveness of the ‘conversation’ between the teacher and the student. In
contrast, for successful transmission to occur, only a rudimentary and proscribed
relationship is required, such as that between actors on a stage and their audience, or
examining lawyer and the witness. The teacher’s responsibility is to practise good
presentation skills or questioning skills while the students’ responsibility is to take
notes and listen attentively, responding, if at all, in prescribed ways such as clapping to
show pleasure, fidgeting to show displeasure (in a large group) or appropriate ‘yeses’
and ‘nos’.
The interpretive power of the teacher-student relationship is illustrated in my own
consulting work by the following typical example: a group of students, who described
their teacher as arrogant and condescending, cited as evidence the fact that he repeated
key phrases, ‘as if we were all waiting breathlessly to write down his pearls’, in the
words of one student. I made a mental note about the inadvisability of repetition as a
teaching strategy. However, a short time later, another group cited the same fact-
repetition-as evidence of the extreme thoughtfulness of their teacher. ‘He slows down
and repeats the key points because he is sensitive to the fact that we are taking notes.’
The difference between these two interpretations resulted not from differences in the
teachers’ strategy or style of repetition, but rather from differences in the relationships
between each student and his or her teacher. The group who interpreted their teacher’s
actions favourably, seemed to trust their teacher more. ‘Trust’, in this context, was
manifested by a willingness to assume that their teacher was acting primarily in their
own behalf. Experiences such as this have made me question our heavy emphasis, over
the last several decades, on teaching methods, often to the exclusion of the
interpersonal context of those teaching methods.
‘Interpersonal climate’ is another area of study which I predict will become more
important under a dialogical conception of teaching and learning. Interpersonal
climate (or ‘class climate’) is a broader concept than the teacher-student relationship.
It also includes a wide range of influences such as the physical atmosphere of the
classroom (space, temperature, seating), and the social and economic relationship of
the students to the course. Predict the differences in the classroom climates that would
likely result from a required course for first-year students from a professional faculty,
versus a course offered on a voluntary basis, to newly hired immigrants as part of a
programme to help them find high-paying jobs in the new country. Teachers of English
in the professional school face an uphill battle since the prevailing assumption is that
the teacher is party to an administrative rigidity perpetrated on the students out of
callous lack of concern for their needs; teachers in the second type of course, by
contrast, are usually seen as the students’ helper, and thus given their cooperation.
The third problem area which I predict will receive increased emphasis as a result of a
 154 British Journal of Educational Technology No. 2 Vol17 May 1986

shift toward a dialogical conception of teaching and learning is a new perspective on

feedback. The traditional approach to feedback fits the transmission metaphor much
more than it does the dialogical one. The concept of feedback, after all, comes out of
cybernetic systems theory, not the psychology of conversation. The thermostat on
your wall receives a ‘message’ from the air in the room that the temperature is too low
for its comfort setting; it ‘responds’ by sending a signal to the furnace to put out more
heat. By this primitive communication the thermostat and the furnace can successfully
regulate the temperature of the room between a high and low setting. In more complex
cybernetic systems the furnace becomes a machine capable of many different responses
and the thermostat becomes a sensor able to detect many variables besides
temperature. Although complex homeostases can be accomplished by such a process it
is still not a good model of feedback toward the improvement of the human
conversation that constitutes teaching and learning according to the dialogical
metaphor. What the machines leave out is a discussion of the values underlying the
messages, and the creative generation of new ideas. What we do not see is the furnace
answering the thermostat in this way: ‘Yes, I know: It’s cold again. But I’m working
very inefficiently at this level of output. Couldn’t we reconsider the temperature
setting? A few degrees colder is probably healthier for our bosses anyway. Besides, it
will give them a chance to wear those new sweaters they bought last weekend. I think
that we should get together with them and thrash this thing out.’ Machines have their
‘values’built in by their designers, whereas a real dialogue between human beings can
reconsider the values underlying the decision, as well as a number of apparently
extraneous variables, like the sweaters, which were not predicted as part of the system
before the dialogue began. In a dialogue there is room for creative divergences. If we
view the improvement of teaching as a mutual accommodation and cooperation of two
persons, a teacher and student, then we may have to take a new look a t the unique
characteristics of the kind of feedback that is more likely to emerge from a human
conversation than from the exchange between the furnace and a thermostat.

Implications for ITL practice

There are other implications of a shift to the dialogical metaphor, in addition to its
impact on ITL research. The dialogical metaphor allows a broader conception of the
field of ITL than the transmission metaphor. This broader conception will allow more
tactical flexibility and therefore more effective action. Consider the example of a large
undergraduate course, taught and examined by many teachers. Both student and
faculty complaints about the exams led to a request for outside expert help. The
problem was framed in terms of the need to cut redundancy in question-writing,
increase consistency of form, style, and question difficulty. One solution to the problem
was the centralization of the exam process under the guidance of a small group of
experts and teachers. Questions submitted by teachers would be edited and adminis-
tered centrally by a panel of experts. This solution assumed a model of education as
transmission-something ‘we’ (teachers and experts) do to ‘them’ (students).
The exam questions improved according to the technical criteria set out, but there
were other effects that were not good. The experts broke the feedback loop between
students and teachers. The natural dialogue between students and teachers stimulated
 Metaphors Underlying the Improvement of Teaching and Learning 155

by the exam process was cut off, faculty became less responsive, students became
frustrated with the impersonal nature of the process, and trust weakened. If the ITL
consultants involved had been more aware of the conception of education as a
conversation or dialogue and had seen themselves as facilitating that conversation,
they may have modified their improvement strategy accordingly.
Another advantage of a broader conceptualization of teaching and learning may lie
in an increased flexibility on the part of the teaching consultant in dealing with teachers
who hold different conceptions of ITL from themselves. A teacher who expects an
educational ‘engineer’ to help him patch up his delivery may react negatively to a
consultant who attempts to enhance the teacher-student relationship; the consultant’s
attempt may be viewed as incompetent, soft-headed, or even meddlesome. A broader
conception of teaching and learning, will enable the consultant to be aware of this
potential conflict, and to take steps to overcome it.
Finally, a broader conceptual basis for ITL research and practice may foster greater
understanding among consultants and researchers concerning the meaning and
importance of one another’s work. ITL consultants and researchers would benefit
from the mutual understanding that comes of knowing the presuppositions that their
colleagues hold which sometimes lead to conflictingjudgements about quality in ITL.
In the long run they will need to be able to understand one another and to cooperate
with one another in order to convince administrators that their work should survive
the fiscal constraints of these times and in order to develop ITL into an integral field of
study.
In addition, agreement about fundamentals among the researchers in this field,
according to Kuhn, is the prerequisite to an effective, focused science. Jacquetta
Megarry (1 983) recently reminded workers in the ITL field about the importance of
agreement of the paradigm if we are to realize the steady progress characterized by
Kuhn’s ‘normal science’: ‘Standing on the shoulders of your predecessors only helps
you to see further if they are facing in the same direction. The steady incremental
progress which Kuhn characterizes as “normal science’’ cannot commence until the
paradigm is agreed’ (p 34).
Finally, widespread agreement among consultants about the assumptions underly-
ing their activities could help them avoid involvement in the kind of power struggles in
which the quality of teaching and learning is not even considered, such as politically
motivated curriculum changes, departmental territorial battles, or patronage. If the
consultants and researchers fail to develop a uniform framework within which they can
judge the quality of their own work, others will be quick to judge it based on their own,
perhaps less sympathetic, frameworks.

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