Obtained results point to the usefulness of learning metaphors to facilitate the comprehension of political discourse.
THE season of clichés is upon us, with end-of-school speeches -- perversely called "commencement" -- ringing out their uplifting platitudes: "go forth," "trust your instincts," "make the world a better place". This is the time when new chapters are beginning, windows of opportunity are opening, and countless mass-produced metaphors are filling the halls of learning.
The five mountains in the metaphor represent the five clusters of challenges in the future of learning that need to be resolved in the following years or decades.
Paavola and Hakkarainen [25] introduce three metaphors for learning.
The toolkit uses the metaphor of a tree to explore child rights education in the context of school-based initiatives that promote learning about rights, learning through rights (using rights as an organizing principle to transform the culture of learning) and learning for rights (taking action to realize rights), in an overall context of learning as a right.
A third basis is the use of manipulatives designed to serve as "metaphor-enhanced learning objects" that instantiate objects and their relationships within the mitochondrion and chloroplast (Table 2; Reese, 2010, p. 147, and references therein).
According to Reese, "Metaphor-enhanced learning objects are scaffolding that makes thinking concrete" (2010, p. 146).
"… If I respond to the metaphor of spring, I nevertheless learned, years ago, from my Mexican father, from my Irish nuns, to count on winter.
I appreciated the discussion about the proper amount of metaphor, and it helped me to consider how metaphor is helpful for learning, but strong metaphor can limit how an interface will be used.
The selection of a metaphor may guide the conceptualisation of the learning experience in terms of activities, timing, tools, collaboration, assessment, outcomes, support, and location.
