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Collegial reflection on the meaning ofmetaphors in learning: emerging theoryand practiceAdele Nyea, Roslyn Foskeya & Helen Edwardsa

a School of Education, University of New England, Armidale,AustraliaPublished online: 24 May 2013.

To cite this article: Adele Nye, Roslyn Foskey & Helen Edwards (2014) Collegial reflection on themeaning of metaphors in learning: emerging theory and practice, Studies in Continuing Education,36:2, 132-146, DOI: 10.1080/0158037X.2013.796921

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Collegial reflection on the meaning of metaphors in learning: emergingtheory and practice

Adele Nye*, Roslyn Foskey and Helen Edwards

School of Education, University of New England, Armidale, Australia

(Received 2 October 2012; final version received 11 April 2013)

As educators and lifelong learners, we were drawn together by the question: Howhave we fostered our own capacity for agency, self-efficacy and risk-taking in theresearch practices we utilize? This paper reveals a connectivity and enablingthread that has enriched our experiences within and across our disciplinary areas.In particular this paper articulates the value of metaphor as a conceptual tool aswell as sharing insights and reflections on the workings of progressive integrationinto communities of practice.

Keywords: metaphor; communities of practice; reflection; higher education;affirmation

Introduction

We are three post-doctoral academics, all from a rural Australian background, and

based in a School of Education at a regional Australian university. This paper seeks

to address recent calls for a rethinking of continuing professional development

through paying attention to the metaphors used in conceptualizing professional

learning (Boud and Hager 2012). It is a response by three women who had the

opportunity to be a part of an on-campus adult education community of practice

during their studies and who continue to meet on a regular basis. The focus of the

first author’s thesis examined the lifelong legacies of studying history in tertiary

education. The second author explored community learning through an interactive

theatre process undertaken with audiences comprised mainly of older rural

Australian men. The third author explored adult learning in an early childhood

setting.

This paper examines the aspects of the emergent professional learning of the

three authors through their doctoral studies and beyond. Metaphors for learning

were prominent within the analysis and communication process of each author’s

thesis.

Our narrative of metaphors and learning has been largely located in the collegial

and nurturing practice of postmodern emergence (Somerville 2008). This thinking

space accommodates the unknown, the abstract and the peripheral. It cushions our

anxiety through shared conversations. The outcomes in general terms affirmed

Johansson and Boud’s (2010, 360) statement that ‘learning is discovered and

*Corresponding author. Email: anye@une.edu.au

Studies in Continuing Education, 2014

Vol. 36, No. 2, 132�146, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0158037X.2013.796921

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generated together with others from a complex web of contextual, interactional and

expectational factors’.

Methodology

The development of this article presented us with an intellectual challenge: How

might we articulate our own theoretical and methodological journeys and connect

these experiences with a broader transdisciplinary conversation on metaphors andlearning? The challenge was answered as each of us shared our stories of the learning

journey as a means for narrative building. This narrative process is recognized as

both rewarding and effective for practising educators (Wilcox 2009).

In our paper we reflect upon our doctoral experiences drawing on collaborative,

participatory action and reflection models of learning (Ghaye 2009; Kemmis and

McTaggart 2000). However, the understandings here are centrally located in, and a

product of, the articulation of emergent postmodernism by Somerville (2008). She

explains how understanding emerges when we allow ourselves to become other-to-one’s-self, through creating a pause to consider a different perspective in the ‘iterative

process of representation and reflection’ (Somerville 2008, 209).

Our earliest collegial conversations were enabled through the peer learning and

support inherent to Somerville’s model. In particular the collegial practices she

initiated as our doctoral supervisor early in the process for each of us. It was

Somerville who provided the context for the emergence of the community of practice

that we shared within the doctoral years and which continues to evolve in the present.

The metaphors or images we share here are central to the ontological andepistemological work of meaning-making enabled through Somerville’s practice.

In preparing this paper we have re-engaged over a 12-month period in the process

of sharing ‘storytelling as research praxis’ (de Carteret 2008, 235). In this process we

again found ourselves entering into ‘the chaotic place of unknowing’ (Somerville

2008, 209) as we bent back upon our doctoral experiences. This process generated the

personal stories we share and reflect upon within this paper. In reflecting on our

doctoral experience, both separately and together, we came to understand not only

the commonalities, but even more importantly how the different contexts of ourresearch influenced which metaphors we drew upon, and how these metaphors were

incorporated within the learning process.

Transformation and reflection as a practice and metaphor

Just as Boud and Hager (2012, 18) had alerted us to the problematic and misleading

nature of the notions of acquisition and transference, we too found that these

prominent metaphors of learning do not reflect our own experiences of doctoral

learning. It was Somerville’s permission-giving approach that offered us the insight

that could, ‘facilitate the uncertain and the imperfect, the reaching towards not-

quite-there in knowledge making’ (Somerville 2008, 213). Metaphors became one

way to visualize, conceptualise and explain our experiences within this process.The primary metaphors we have drawn upon are inherently contextualized within

the regional Australian environment in which we live and where we have carried out

our research. The one image, or metaphor, we have agreed upon in sharing our

experiences is the transformative experience of learning as a process which is organic

Studies in Continuing Education 133

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and fluid, rather than a single moment of illumination. This idea of fluidity, and

thence flow, emerged through our shared experience of place. Yet this is also a place

which is seen and experienced differently by each of us with our varied lives,

disciplinary backgrounds and research foci.Adapting to an academic persona through engaging in doctoral studies was a

watershed for each of us. One definition for a watershed is an area or ridge of land

that separates waters flowing to different rivers, basins or seas, and another is an

event or period marking a turning point in a course of action or state of affairs

(Pearsall 1998). The regional Australian city in which we live is on a watershed which

means dependent on the direction we take in moving away from the centre and we

will be engaging with very different systems. To the east of us the rivers are short and

swift, and in many places form deep gorges and spectacular waterfalls on their way tothe Pacific Ocean. On the west the landscape is more gently sloped and opens out

into plains. This causes the river system, which is to the west, then south, of us to

flow slowly as it meanders for thousands of kilometres across the vast inland areas of

the Murray�Darling Basin before it eventually reaches the Southern Ocean in South

Australia.

Certainly, in undertaking our doctoral studies, there were momentous points that

shifted us to past a threshold, a watershed, towards different, and often unfamiliar,

knowledge systems. Our learning experiences demanded continual re-evaluation aswe tumbled rapidly towards the great unknown allowing for the emergence of new

understandings. Yet there were also periods of transition and consolidation, and of

thinking and unthinking, as we meandered across the vast plains, particularly as we

shared experiences with those on similar learning journeys through residential

schools, planned get-togethers with peers, supervision sessions and more informal

gatherings. In this ever-evolving community of practice we reflected, problematized,

changed and grew in our understandings. The facilitating tool in this process has so

often been an image, or metaphorical lens, providing a means for thinking through,sharing and negotiating the discomfort of the ‘stammering knowing . . . A knowing

not so sure of itself’ (Lather 1997, 288).

As we reflect on this experience of reaching towards, of becoming academics, we

can identify the courage that was required to follow a particular metaphorical

conceptualization, and yet when that was no longer a useful learning tool to embrace

a different but, at that moment, more enabling metaphor. Again this has highlighted

‘the undoing (which is an essential) condition for the generation of new knowledge’

(Somerville 2008, 216).

An evolving community of practice

The context for our shared experience emerged out of a group of women who

originally came together in one place on the University of New England campus �Fiery Cottage � for a reflective and emergent learning process initiated by the

academic Margaret Somerville (Somerville et al. 2004). This group of women has

had a fluid membership, and continues to come together in 2013 even thoughSomerville left the University in 2005. We now meet up regularly for lunch in another

place on the campus, at the historic birthplace of the university, Booloominbah. Our

collegial relationships have deepened within each of these settings, yet each of our

personal and interconnecting stories also encompass many other communities of

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practice, places and contexts. Ours is ‘a narrative of liquid learning in terms of

multiple and simultaneous spaces’ for each of us; we inhabit several learning spaces

simultaneously and, in those spaces, engage ‘not just contrasting learning experiences

but even contending learning experiences’ (Barnett 2010, online).

Our own legitimate peripheral participation (Wenger 1998) spaces, the Fiery

Cottage early in the doctoral process, online spaces, in residential schools and most

recently sharing meals at Booloominbah on-campus on Wednesdays, have all been

deeply embedded in notions of collegial support and opportunities for transforma-

tive and self-reflective learning. Somerville provided an introduction to the practice

of such spaces and we have continued to evolve in and through them. The informal

space we have experienced has been generative, meditative, reflective, emergent as

well as inclusive and supportive for new entrants. We have come together within this

collegial environment to articulate our thinking, support each other and to write

together.

Our current group is comprised of more than three authors and reflects the

spectrum of early career academics: new PhD candidate, some close to submission

and all others within a decade of submission of our doctorates. We are reminded of

(Boud and Hager 2012, 22) three metaphors of ‘participation, construction and

becoming’ as these reflect both the Fiery Cottage community and our doctoral

experiences. We have drawn upon and extended the practices which emerged through

Somerville’s initiative. The scope of our shared community of practice is now much

wider and the learning far-reaching. Collegial reflection and the use of metaphors for

learning have been useful strategies for our transformative learning practices. Such

practices draw meaning from entire domains of our experience, entwined with

abstract thought being largely, though not entirely, metaphorical and theoretical

concepts not complete without considering the embedded metaphors (Lakoff and

Johnson 2003).

Three voices/journeys

Voice 1

Generative and transformative learning

My journey from PhD to early career researcher has been located in a qualitative

realm and marked by the use of enabling metaphors and emergent and collegial

practice. In constructing a narrative about these learning experiences I am unable to

do so without evoking metaphorical images of journeys, the self, illumination and

play. My supervisors promoted a sense of self-efficacy through energized guidance

based on collegiality. They facilitated an exploration of thinking about history and

the teaching of history. The research became a playful exchange between a sense of

the known, unknown and a desire to understand history theory. The initial approach

was an engagement with Margaret Somerville’s postmodern emergence theories. This

approach revealed a wealth of spaces and places for thinking and developing a

reflective research practice (Somerville et al. 2004). This was a nomadic and

transdisciplinary doctoral journey and it would prove useful well beyond the

graduation ceremony and gown.

I was interested in the intersections of higher education, the history discipline and

its legacy in practice, and yet I had no clear idea as to how one might articulate this

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multifaceted narrative. The discipline had been struggling with energetic and

sometimes painful theoretical debates. I wanted to connect these debates with the

scholarship of teaching and learning in history and at that time very few researchers

were working in this field, particularly from the perspective of higher education. I

was very much alone in my quest and had to develop confidence to pursue the

research. Somerville’s group work, which focused on collegial learning and dialogue,

was instrumental in this development. The promotion of self-reflective academic and

personal multiplicity within this practice alongside a focus on writing as a form of

enquiry (Richardson 1994) provided an enabling and supportive pathway for

thinking and writing.The transformative nature of this period was marked by a new and emergent

freedom to apply multiple metaphorical endeavours in my research practice. The first

was the nomadic researcher (St. pierre 1997), who offered affirmation, and, at times,

permission for radical interdisciplinary exploration of teaching and learning and the

theories of history. I explored notions of place, belonging, migration, diaspora,

gender constructions, materiality and performance. I touched on cognitive, socio-

logical, political and geographic theories. Wandering into disciplines became an

explicit research method. The nomadic metaphor was permission giving in a setting

where this sort of meandering might not always be viewed as productive.

The second dominant metaphor was located in the process of data analysis and

was based on two very different forms of production of textiles: weaving and felting.

Both are generative, with bringing together of threads for the formation of fabric �my text � but one came before the other. I first imagined the text as the growing

interlocking of thoughts and theories and the imminent production of a fine and

original weave. Rarely however does a thesis fall together with such ease. ‘I had

imagined the weave became knotted and warped’. I would wonder if I was weaving

the wrong fabric on the wrong frame and, like Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey

(Lowenstam 2000), un-weaving as much as I wove. I turned, literally, to felting and in

doing so focused my mind on the tiny loose fibres of the wool that lock and interlock

together (Nye 2008). Rethinking the shaping of the data as felting the data reflected a

belief in an underlying and connective thesis about historical thinking, learning and

practice. It also led me to Denzin and Lincoln’s notion of the bricolage (2000, 3) and

the inherent multiplicity of form, matter, thread and theory.My thesis was more than the threads of theory and it was also about taking my

thinking to my participants and looking for resonance. Much of the data collection

for my research was focused on historical practice � thinking about my own, listening

to others and exchanging stories with women. As a method for engagement with the

stories of women as historians I began to use the term fragrance as a metaphor. I was

seeking to evoke the sense of familiarity and the sense of authenticity with types of

practice: the affirmation of ‘Oh I do that too!’ As a fragrance practice was not

confined within a professional or institutional domain, it might be the excitement of

exploring the archives but it might also be the way one tells stories about family

history or arranges favourite photographs and objects.

In the research process metaphors are enabling yet temporal. They almost

inevitably lose their sense of containment or density and once again become nomadic

and more significantly, organic. I can identify the sense of becoming referred to by

Boud and Hager (2012) as well as Barnett’s sense of becoming through his

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dispositions that hinge on willingness and epistemic, becoming the emergent self that

reflects the process of ‘knowing and becoming’ (Barnett 2009, 435).

Articulating a narrative around abstract notions of historical thinking, learning

and practice was inevitably problematic. Thus the willingness and self-efficacy that

grew from Somerville’s practice of collegial dialogue coupled with permission-giving

metaphors were imperative for writing and thesis building. When Somerville moved

on, a supervisory change might have set me adrift but other supervisors stepped in

providing their own personalized and enabling strategies, as well as acknowledging

the shape of the emerging thesis. By this time, I was amid an established supportive

community of practice, and I also possessed a new sense of my own scholarship and

academic maturity. Again a bricolage comes to mind, with the layers of the

experience and knowledge of each supervisor and my organic exploration of theory

and development of my analysis.

In taking the nomadic path it was an imperative to undo, deconstruct, turn

around and try different pathways. This mirrored my research topic which was

equally contestable, organic, temporal and yet historically located. There is a clear

resonance within a contemporary practice as changeable and moving beyond the

modernist perspective of predictable empirical practices (Boud and Hager 2012). It is

a process of mediating the self and knowledge-making which can be exciting and

productive yet daunting and marked by self-doubt.

In recent times, we have reformed this collegial support. The group has grown

and changed, many of us wear the cloak of the early career academic and new

doctoral students have joined us. The location of our learning place has also changed

but the organic conversation and the emergent philosophy remain. We have

intentionally returned to a familiar reflective and collaborative approach, one which

encourages multiplicity and difference and promotes an intellectual and embodied

well-being.

Voice 2

Learning through the flow of theatre and of life

My doctoral research was based on a project I coordinated over several years

through the Institute for Rural Futures (IRF) at the University of New England. The

project both pre-dated my doctoral years and continued on during and beyond them.

In the ‘Mature Men Matter’ project I collaborated with theatre professional Grant

Dodwell (scriptwriter, director and actor) to develop several research-based scenarios

then performed by experienced actors in rural villages and towns across northern

New South Wales, Australia. These scenarios were performed for non-traditional

theatre audiences in a range of community settings. Six of the performances became

the case studies for my doctoral thesis.

The scenarios used were fictional, but drew directly upon research in which I had

previously been involved on rural ageing, third age learning, farm succession and the

transition from work to retirement. The interactive theatre process used provided a

creative context for community learning related to older men’s well-being through the

enactment of activities with others. This was a process in which I had been intimately

involved as an overall project co-ordinator, in character development and as script

advisor, and also on some occasions as a discussion facilitator.

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In the context of this applied research I became fascinated by the flow of

engagement within the interactive theatre process. As Barndt (2008, 353�354) has

highlighted, community arts-based approaches to research help to ‘open up aspects

of peoples’ beings, their stories, their memories and aspirations, in ways other

methods might miss’. Within interactive forms of theatre, the aesthetic environment

created actively engages the audience and generates ‘knowledge and discovery,

cognition and recognition: properties which stimulate the process of learning byexperience’ (Boal 1999, 20).

In the theatre process used in ‘Mature Men Matter’ following a scripted scene/s

the imaginary fourth wall of the theatre was broken and the audience and all the

characters engaged in a dialogue to tease out what was going on, then one character

was selected and coached by the audience with the character improvising their

suggestions in a replay of the initial scene/s, and the other characters improvising in

response. Through this process the story that emerged within each performance was

distinct. This process reflects Boud and Hager’s (2012) point that even when the

content (scenario and characterisations) is pre-specified the learning that unfolds is

not replicated across groups. Even where the same scenario was performed and the

same actors were performing the characters, differences in the audience character-

istics, the particular locality and venue in which the performance occurred, combined

with the interaction that emerged between the characters and audience, meant each

performance event was unique. Exploring the dynamics of this process became the

focus of my doctoral research.I can trace my focus on metaphors within my PhD thesis back to a comment

made in 2004, not by one of my supervisors, but rather by another education

academic, Cathryn McConaghy. I was working with McConaghy at that time as a

research associate in a project on rural schooling (Green et al. 2007). She had asked

me what approach I was taking with my thesis. When I described how I was rather

stuck in the approach that I was taking (in particular in trying to decide whether

learning in this community context was formal, non-formal or informal), she

commented that it seemed a little too predictable. McConaghy’s challenge as a

critical friend assisted me in acknowledging the question I was really struggling with

was not so much the category of learning, nor even how of learning, but a more

fundamental issue � just what is learning within the context of an interactive theatre

process? Unsurprisingly my supervisors encouraged me in pursuing this question.

I began to read more learning theory and when I found Sfard’s (1998) article on

metaphors and learning another shift occurred as I realised that I did not necessarily

need to choose among theories. This led me onto a more challenging engagementwith the complex interconnections and interactions of metaphor, language, environ-

ment, learning and well-being. In developing my thesis I drew upon two metaphors

as I attempted to make sense of the ‘Mature Men Matter’ process. The first was the

kaleidoscope, which arose from an experience at a conference. The second was flow

(initially conceived as a water cycle), which emerged out of the context of the

research with many of the performances were undertaken during an extended period

of drought in Eastern Australia.

The kaleidoscope metaphor emerged through an international rural conference I

attended in Abingdon, Virginia, USA in 2004. I was in a craft shop with two other

people also attending the conference when one said: ‘Did you see the kaleidoscopes?’

I had seen them, yet it was not until we picked them up and began to play with them

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that we could experience them in all their beauty � an embodied, visual, tactile,

kinesthetic and importantly also a relational process.

The Kaleidoscope is an apt metaphor for learning through engaging with theatre.

Like theatre, the kaleidoscope is a container for action and yet one in which the

experience of participation can neither be fixed nor contained. The kaleidoscope in

the form we know today was developed by Brewster in 1817 to demonstrate optic

principles, but has since become associated more with play than science (Gray 1993).

It has often been used as a metaphor for life and the experience of change (Gray

1993).

The Kaleidoscope is a cylinder containing mirrors and coloured glass or pebbles

and reflects a pattern back to the observer when it is put to the eye. Whilst the

kaleidoscope is a container, it is also open-ended in the sense that in order to observe

anything at all, and there must be a source of light beyond the object itself. Like

theatre, in observing the action within the performance the audience member

remains relatively still, yet this stillness should not be confused with passivity. Each

person looking into a kaleidoscope (performance) will see different patterns, which

are emergent and ever changing. In a kaleidoscope these patterns are also dependent

on the strength and qualities of the light source, location of the reflective surface in

relation to the light, and the shifts in the interconnections between the pebbles or

glass as they move about.

In blending theatre with kaleidoscope as a metaphor as I noted on a diagram that

I used within a residential school in 2005, I came to understand that ‘the whole has

structure � but it is not fixed and unchanging � not linear � rather than focused on

origin (set place to begin) and destination (outcomes) it is about what occurs within �the learning and knowing in context’. My experience in engaging with the interactive

theatre process links with another metaphor for theatre used by Schechner (1995, 41)

who described theatre as ‘a porous, flexible gatherer; a three-dimensional, dynamic,

flow-through container’. Through the container of theatre I was being challenged to

reconsider my pre-existing understanding of learning.

A second metaphor, of flow, is a term that is often associated with creativity and

engagement, the merging of action, awareness and absorption in an activity

(Csikszentmihaly 1990). In becoming absorbed with the Mature Men Matter

process, assisted through reviewing film footage of the six case studies, I began

watching, following and re-engaging with what was actually going on within the

performance events and in the stories which emerged.

My learning evolved into transdisciplinary practice as I followed the flow of

sense-making across disciplinary boundaries from adult education to health, theatre,

the social sciences, communication, ageing and gender studies. My doctoral

experience is an example of the fluid and increasingly super-complex transdisciplin-

ary learning environment of higher education (Barnett 2011).

As a doctoral student the creative flow of understanding emerged gradually as I

was challenged to find my way through unfamiliar, and often for a newcomer,

difficult to negotiate terrain. This demanded an effort, a level of exertion, which I

was initially reluctant to make. I found myself, stuck, stagnating as the flow of reified

conceptualisations of learning ceased to be meaningful in the context of interactive

theatre. Yet once I allowed myself to accept the messy, embodied process (of both

theatre and doctoral experience) and engaged with new ways of knowing, a different

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level of engagement became possible. Although challenging, the effort involved

proved to be intrinsically rewarding.

The metaphor of water cycle emerged through the context of my research as I

became uncomfortable with the assumptions underlying the discourse of drought as

an unanticipated crisis, whereas dry years are a regular feature of Australian weather

cycles. I was also interested in how imagery is used to re-present drought through the

media � a subject of many discussions over morning tea at the IRF and with other

colleagues around the university. The idea of cycles also reflects the round trips which

were integral to the Mature Men Matter project. The discussions that took place

within the team of actors and presenters during these journeys were an important

part of the experience. Ingold (2011, 216) helps to explain the ontological dimensions

of this experience when he describes the learning of artisans as an improvised

movement along the flow of life, and the importance of joining with and following

the forces and flows that bring the form into being.

The quality of the flow of learning also varied with the social, cultural, political,

economic and physical environments we encountered. I began to consider the

dynamics of the systems within which the performances occurred. My supervisors,

my doctoral peers and other academics with whom I came into contact were

challenging me to pay more attention to these interconnecting experiences. With the

support of my doctoral supervisors this then led me to consider if and how some key

conceptual metaphors used within the academic literature, in describing and

theorizing health and learning, were evident in the process.

Through the process of developing my thesis I had drawn upon two generative

metaphors, the kaleidoscope and the flow. This not only helped me to broaden my

conceptualization of learning within the context of interactive theatre but also had a

profound impact on my emergent sense of becoming an academic. In particular, I

developed a sense of being an academic willing and able to move across disciplinary

boundaries. Within the final thesis I did not directly refer to the kaleidoscope

metaphor, although I still often find myself considering its applicability in other

contexts. The metaphor of flow did feature within my final thesis writing as I

incorporated, teased out and also critiqued several learning theories through their

underpinning metaphors (such as acquisition, transformation, participation, knowl-

edge creation and complexity) along with four metaphors which have tended to

shape the theorization and practice of health promotion (machine, war, river and

ecology).

Voice 3

Transformative workplace learning

The turn of the twenty-first century brought a fresh start to how learning was being

conceptualised. For me full-time teaching in technical and further education, where

learning was viewed as acquisition, was replaced by the opportunity as a doctoral

student to join several communities of practice in higher education, where knowledge

was emergent and reminiscent of Denzin and Lincoln’s (2000) bricolage. My specific

research focus was to examine the meaning of workplace learning. In 2000 the staff at

Kulai Aboriginal Preschool, Coffs Harbour, accepted the challenge of preparing

their centre for a quality assurance review. They invited me to participate in a pilot

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study with them on this journey. The National Childcare Accreditation Council

(NCAC 1994) had set a process of self-study, leading to goal setting to achieve the

practices, policies and procedures required to gain accreditation as a quality early

childhood service. As participants we had no previous experience of the Quality

Improvement and Accreditation System (QIAS). To be engaged in the process we

needed to gain an understanding of what was required as individuals and as part of

the workplace transdisciplinary team.The fieldwork began with a research plan, which mapped out a broad schematic

view of what had to be done. This map drew attention to the complexity of the

undertaking and raised awareness of the need to prepare the place, children’s

portfolios, preschool policies and practices for review. Initially a tree as preschool

metaphor was examined to explore how the segments of elders, children, staff,

families, community and researcher could come together like a living organism, in a

holistic way. This provided the bare bones, rather than the enactment of organisa-

tional change expected of the quality assurance process that was imposing itself on

the preschool. Through self-study the preschool analysed their performance and

produced a portfolio to demonstrate how the national standards (NCAC 1993) were

met.

Amongst the first challenges was to find ways to communicate amongst

participants’ understandings about what changes (including physical, administrative

and leadership practices) were needed in the workplace. An observation of symbols

in the preschool and broader coastal city environment revealed the lifecycle of the

Eastern Coastal Banksia flower. This searching had been for a symbol to‘encapsulate the idea that professionals are in the process of becoming’ (Boud and

Hager 2012, 20).

Specimen flowers of the stages of the lifecycle of the Banksia were introduced to

participants in an informal workshop. As the discussion ensued, links were made

between the steps of the quality assurance process and the development of the flower.

A small bud was the starting point where little was known of quality assurance, self-

study, portfolio preparation, through to the day of assessment when the preschool

would be visited by an external reviewer. To achieve accreditation the preschool

needed to be in full bloom and colour on Review Day. The cut flowers’ sprigs enabled

each of us to hold Banksias in our hands or to observe their presence whilst the

metaphorical transformation was voiced and visualized in our minds. Touching,

talking and hearing about the Banksia as quality assurance allowed a range of senses

(auditory, haptic, kinaesthetic, visual and olfactory) to engage and promote

understanding by utilising multiple intelligences (Martin 2008).

It was during these discussions that one of the first points of transformation

occurred. In essence the flowers dematerialised into ideas and concepts, whilstproviding a frame for understanding. The transformation was not the Banksia

becoming the concept of quality assurance, rather, it used the movement in the

developing, evolving flower to visualise and illustrate the change process. The

preschool as an organisation and/or individuals needed to be embraced for learning

to occur. The instances of transformation and connectedness occurred according to

Latour (1995), when awareness and understanding began to emerge and the full

impact of the energy generated was felt.

The learning moved from the known and real forms of the Banksia, which

likened the flower to the unreal terminology of quality assurance. In the

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transformation, a general idea of the meaning of quality assurance was introduced in

a concrete three-dimensional form. The complexity of the QIAS was ameliorated by

the transformation of the flower into a metaphor of the quality improvement life-

cycle. Later each Banksia specimen was photographed and combined with a shortexplanatory text, to become a timeline on the staff room wall. The transformation

was captured and the action steps were represented in a two-dimensional form.

The photographic timeline summarised an understanding of the quality

assurance process, where positive outcomes were assumed as reality. Kulai Preschool

as Banksia assumed acceptance and conformity with the QIAS standards. Such a

timeline depicted each participant in the process having a similar knowledge base

and practice skills. This clearly was a false premise. The lifecycle of the flower had

communicated expected changes and plotted a future path; however it did notaccount for the unexpected bumps (Davis and Sumara 2008).

Another more flexible metaphor was used to conceptualise the process of

continuing professional development where learning was shared and emerged as new

practices. The events that occurred were recorded as a journey down a river from the

eastern side of the watershed towards the Pacific Ocean. In the early stages the steam

meandered quite slowly as if proceeding across a plateau. In this period high and

lows were visible, as the liquid and knowledges flowed around corners, doubled back

and enfolded on itself through deviations and diversions. As Review Day approachedit was unclear how the timeline goals could be met, but suddenly the velocity of flow

increased dramatically as if descending over a major waterfall. In this chaotic space

there was the potential to be spun out of control from the power of the tensions

generated. This change in direction provided energy to galvanise together the actions

of the team. In this period changes to practice were realized as new policies were put

in place, and children’s portfolios and targeted programmes were produced.

Plateaued resistance where participant responses were limiting learning (Boud and

Hager 2012, 26) was replaced by peer co-construction of learning and actions. Thisled ultimately to success when the preschool’s quality was acclaimed.

Understanding metaphors

Lakoff and Johnson (2003, 257) explain that we do not have a choice but to think

metaphorically, and that since our brains are embodied the metaphors we draw upon

inevitably ‘reflect our commonplace experiences in the world’. In using metaphorical

approaches in research on learning the choice of metaphor, as Sfard (1998, 5) pointedout can be ‘a highly consequential decision’. This occurs as we transfer the existing

conceptual schemes from one context to another (Sfard 1998) as we have illustrated

through our three stories.

The most common way that metaphors are applied in research uses a

correspondence model which projects a metaphor onto a phenomenon using

deductive reasoning (Spicer and Alvesson 2010). In this model the goal is to achieve

a good fit between the metaphor being used and in the target of the research. We

were more innovative, constructing the metaphors we used ‘through the creativeinterplay between the source and target domain’ and in doing so (although we did

not realize this at the time) were practicing the ‘domains-interaction’ model of the

metaphor (Spicer and Alvesson 2010, 43). At first we each encountered a potential

metaphor, and the parallel structures between the metaphor and the research topic

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were identified and constructed, second, the blend between the domains was further

elaborated and third as ideas and conjectures were linked and translated the

emergent meaning was being applied back to the topic (Cornelissen 2005, 758). The

heuristic value of the emergent meaning of the metaphors we have described allowed

us to perceive the focus of our research differently, and to draw this shift in our

perspective into the research process.For each of us there were important variations in how these metaphors emerged

within the doctoral process. For Foskey and Edwards both the metaphors they drew

upon emerged from within the research process itself. In navigating the debates of

history theory and making new connections with education, Nye was uncertain and

lacked confidence. Her metaphors can be located in Cornelissen’s linkage of the

creative act and new meaning making (2005, 751). Edwards in a similar manner

discovered meaning-making as her bricolage re-emerged as a multi-coloured eastern

river tracking each participants’ learning journey. The enabling quality of these

metaphors allowed space for new thinking about scholarship and practice.

In contrast, for Foskey (2007), the kaleidoscope metaphor, in particular, emerged

through a shift in perspective that occurred in reflecting on the theatre process and

realizing the correspondence with an experience in which she had explored

kaleidoscopes in another setting. This initial identification of some correspondence

was then elaborated and meanings further blended allowing a new level of

understanding to emerge. Yet this metaphor did not feature in her final thesis.

Through her engagement with the academic literature Foskey had been influenced by

Lakoff and Johnson’s (2003) conceptual metaphor theory. As a result within the

development of her thesis she became interested to what extent the five key

metaphors for learning and the four key metaphors for health who she had identified

within the academic literature played out within the theatre process.

Practice approach to understanding professional learning

In the first study the research participants were the historians who had been external

students in one cohort at the university. At a workshop they relived their learning

experiences and brought with them symbolic objects to recount their professional

evolvement since graduation. The stories they shared told of how their workplace

participations had led them to construct themselves through a process of becoming

historians.

In the second study the research participants, both actors and audience members,

were drawn together through their shared participation in interactive theatre. The

learning process explored the experiences of ageing, masculinity and rurality

allowing different perspectives to emerge. Small shifts in perspective brought

significant changes in the relational dynamics with the initial scene/s being replayed

with a significantly altered outcome. Following the flow of engagement between, as

well as within, performances allowed the unique qualities of each performance to

emerge.

The third study provided an account of the journey of staff of a preschool

towards preparation for a quality assurance review. At many points along the way

the path was smooth, whilst at others there were significant bumps that lead to the

enactment of multiple intelligences to facilitate learning.

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The authors embraced the learning that emerged in each research study, and this

occurred, as Boud and Hager (2012, 22) noted, ‘through the experiences of practice

with peers and others, drawing on expertise that is accessed in response to need’. Each

study recognized the presence of challenges that called for problem-solving to enablethe construction of new becomings. Each drew on metaphors to provide organising

and communication tools in exploring the experiences that were stretched to their

limits, and then replaced by other metaphors prior to the point of destruction.

Contextualising professional learning

In most discussions of professional learning the context can be spoken of as a

generic, rather than a particular quality. In our discussion the generic quality was our

shared experience of learning within a higher educational setting in a regional

Australian environment. Yet our collegial experience is more than a story about

learning within higher education in a generic sense, for it occurred in a particular

institution, the University of New England, in the regional town of Armidale,located at the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia.

Each of our studies also took place within particular, rather than, generic contexts.

For the first author the context of history learning was a regional Australian university.

For the second author it was in rural towns and villages across northern New South

Wales, Australia, which differed in important ways. For the third author the context of

professional development was a preschool in a regional Australian city.

As colleagues in academia who collided by chance during doctoral studies we

brought to this paper our diverse disciplinary and experiential understandings. Ourdiffering disciplinary backgrounds, plus our particular life-wide (Barnett 2010) and

lifelong learning experiences, influenced the metaphors we chose to explain learning. The

associated experiences and practices impacted on how far meanings could be stretched,

and before it became apparent a different metaphor was needed to encapsulate what was

emerging.

Like Keenan (2010, 1038�2039) we found that a single discipline could not

provide the framework to ‘accommodate the complexity and multiple potential

trajectories across disparate bodies of literature.’ A ‘[f]ailure to recognise howsociocultural contexts frame conceptual definitions . . . result in faulty assumptions’

in relation to learning (1039). Similar to Davis and Sumara (2008, 35) as colleagues

we found that our inherent transdisciplinary approach ‘compels a sort of border

crossing � a need to step outside the limiting frames and methods of phenomenon

specific disciplines . . . (yet) sufficiently informed about one another’s perspectives

and motivations to be able to work together as a collective’.

Conclusion

As we draw this paper to a close we have asked ourselves, as facilitators of the

learning of others, how might we foster the capacity for agency, self-efficacy and risk-

taking we have experienced? How we can encourage other learners to move awayfrom well-trodden paths to move into the flow of the learning experience and

recognize the value of this enabling, yet inherently unstable and uncertain, emergent

process? We have found that it is through progressive integration into communities of

practice allowing legitimate peripheral participation (Wenger 1998) that a safe space

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to develop new and emergent understandings can be created. However, we also need

to acknowledge that each of us remains learners in this process no matter how long

we have been participating. Focusing on labels (such as academic supervisor and

student) and hierarchies of participation are factors that can result as Tempest (2003,

195) previously identified in ‘less experienced individuals being reluctant to vocalize

their ideas and challenge orthodox practices’. It is collegial communities of practice

with a fluid membership, like our ever-evolving Fiery women’s group, which

combines continuity with the critical insights of new entrants so necessary to avoid

stagnation.

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