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Indigenous Pacific Emerging Educational Metaphors
Abstract
In reclaiming education for their Pacific Island countries, a new generation of indigenous Pacific scholars is using cultural metaphors as a way of engaging in educational discourse. This article examines the nature and value of these emerging Pacific Island metaphors as they are used in rethinking Pacific education.
... At the school level, cultural distance was identified as a particular barrier for PI learners, especially where the social and cultural requirements of schooling were antithetical to Pacific "lived" experiences and cultural forms of learning (Gegeo, 2001;Sanga, 2013;Thaman, 2008). Many PI Indigenous researchers have highlighted the differences between Western and Pacific cultural forms of knowledge and pedagogies, and their effect on PI approaches to socialization, engagement, and relationships at school (Dooley, Exley, & Singh, 2000;Samu, 2007;Thaman, 2008). ...
... For many PI learners, the home and the school presented as two important settings in which they reviewed, negotiated, and selected their educational goals and their consequent pathways (Paulsen, 2016). This supports the view that PI learners' identity and personal sense of concept is strongly connected to family, where giving support to family and upholding the "common good" (Samu, 2007;Sanga, 2013;Thaman, 2008) is a high priority. This belief both shapes and informs learner goals and priorities. ...
This paper tracks the education trajectories of a small group of Melbourne-based Pacific Islander (PI) learners who transitioned from secondary to post-school destinations, 2012 to 2015. Their school experiences were monitored over four years with the aim of identifying common pathways and underlying factors. The study found that the PI learners typically followed similar post-school pathways to non-PI learners. In all cases, they transitioned directly to higher or vocational education, non-school alternative settings or direct employment pathways. However, there was a consistent pattern of lower level academic achievement and, consequently, lower status post-school pathways. These low-level outcomes, whether directed by learners or schools, were often accepted even if inconsistent with initial learner or parental goals. While a direct transition from secondary school to university was the most desired pathway for many learners and their families, the study found that alternative school settings provided important spaces for learners to re-negotiate their school goals and return to university study. Acquiring employment immediately after leaving school was also perceived as an acceptable alternate pathway. Acceptance of these eventual but unplanned pathways helped reinforce a perception that school transitions of PI learners are typically low-level and mostly predictable.
... I extended my initial literature reviews to consider recent work on research ethics and 'traditional' knowledge, and consulted five additional South Pacific nations' requirements for non-citizen researchers, and included these only in a contextual layer of CDA analysis (Blommaert, 2009;McCormick 2016a;2016b), although there is potential for them to be more systematically and comparatively analysed in future. Such nationally applied approaches are embedded within plurilevel debates and frameworks surrounding the increasing body of regional inquiry into ethical research practices by networks and scholars in the Pacific (Du Plessis & Fairborn-Dunlop, 2009;Fairborn-Dunlop, 2007;Sanga 2013;Smith, 1999), and globally by researchers and multilateral institutions including UNESCO (2007). As Tikly and Bond (2013) identify, UN approaches tend to sit within human rights and research governance approaches, while research and activist approaches have a significantly contrasting, often explicitly decolonizing, approach to the ethically complex aspects of the relationship between research and traditional knowledge. ...
... While it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss in more detail, Table 2 offers examples of these activities and statements in relation to Pacific plurilevel contexts. (Fua, 2014) and other Pacific metaphors (Sanga, 2013) In 'Pacific Ethics and Universal Norms', Fairbairn-Dunlop (2007) argues that 'the Pacific challenge is to develop a post-colonial ethics discourse that is "Pacific in philosophy and locally grounded in context'" (p. 9; see also The emergence of these activities and discourses demonstrate increased attention to, and assertion of, context and identity and, again, underscore the culturally, historically and politically situated nature of education, knowledge and research that I discussed above. ...
In this article, I offer a reflexive auto-ethnography to revisit questions about knowledge and research practices in international contexts, influenced differently by aspects of globalization. Specifically, I position my experience of the Vanuatu research moratorium on 'foreign' researchers of 2013/2014 as a lynchpin to analyse and contribute to long-standing, recently revived debates about ethics in research, the politics of international comparisons, and their relationships with traditional knowledge. I base analysis primarily on my plurilevel research and experiences in parts of Vanuatu, in Australia and in our shared South Pacific sub-region in global context between 2008 and 2016, and on my plurilocal personal and researcher identity. In these spaces, the salience of postcolonial identities--with those already allocated, perceived, or shared--has long been tied to different actors' research aims, application, conduct, and funding. Lenses of critical globalization and postcolonial theories and critical discourse analysis have informed my research to date and, in undertaking this auto-ethnography, I confront current limits and possibilities in these. One aim is to shed light on how we might extend understanding and enactment of inter-related practices of ownership, production, and uses of knowledge situated within decolonizing discourses and more rapidly changing, integrated education and research contexts. I explore how understanding these dimensions can contribute to strengthening our understandings of and resulting approaches to knowledge production and sharing, which I see as the core work of research, research relationships and, ultimately, education and teaching.
... In identifying the governance networks for CSOs in education policy processes, this chapter explores how education and development policy actors in the (South) Pacific have simultaneously leveraged a variety of coherent and non-coherent mechanisms of governance for negotiations at multiple scales of policy, across multiple spheres. Governance activities, actors and discourses constitute recently won and ongoing processes and spaces of decolonization in the region (Coxon & Munce, 2008;Nabobo-Baba, 2012;Sanga, 2013;Thaman, 2003). Sustained decolonizing discourses predate the independence, even existence as nations, of some contexts and countries in the Pacific region and sub-regions of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. ...
... Sustained decolonizing discourses predate the independence, even existence as nations, of some contexts and countries in the Pacific region and sub-regions of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Through-lines of decolonization have long sought to challenge and mediated the economic and political dominance of former colonizers, some of which are now development aid donors, or regional "partners" (Narokobi, 1980;Sanga, 2011Sanga, , 2013. ...
In this chapter, increasing education civil society organization (CSO) and coalition participation in education and development policy processes is interpreted from the perspective of network governance theories. In 2015 “deadline” year for the Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals, I consider their significance and influences within the decolonizing and reorienting “policyscapes” that govern the region and/or sub-region that is variously known as Oceania and the Pacific. The chapter is based on continuing research begun in 2007 into education policy processes at multiple discursive and geographical levels of activity, with a focus on the Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and Melanesian sub-regions. A critical educational policy approach is taken, specifically drawn from the application of methods of Critical Discourse Analysis based in critical development and postcolonial theories. These analytical strategies are particularly salient in mapping and understanding how education policy actors, some “new,” have moved toward and through inclusive and protective regionalism(s). These had developed prior to and during the past quarter of a century of significant changes to governments, governing and governance in the Pacific, Oceania, and well beyond.
In this chapter, increasing education civil society organization (CSO) and coalition participation in education and development policy processes is interpreted from the perspective of network governance theories. In 2015 “deadline” year for the Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals, I consider their significance and influences within the decolonizing and reorienting “policyscapes” that govern the region and/or sub-region that is variously known as Oceania and the Pacific. The chapter is based on continuing research begun in 2007 into education policy processes at multiple discursive and geographical levels of activity, with a focus on the Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and Melanesian sub-regions. A critical educational policy approach is taken, specifically drawn from the application of methods of Critical Discourse Analysis based in critical development and postcolonial theories. These analytical strategies are particularly salient in mapping and understanding how education policy actors, some “new,” have moved toward and through inclusive and protective regionalism(s). These had developed prior to and during the past quarter of a century of significant changes to governments, governing and governance in the Pacific, Oceania, and well beyond.
... We support our conceptualisation of a pedagogy of the heart with reference to the image of a beautiful ula or lei (a garland of flowers or other objects significant in Samoan and other Pasifika cultures). A decade ago, Sanga (2013) pointed out metaphorical language is intrinsic to Pasifika cultures. He acknowledged the growth in the use of cultural metaphors by Pasifika scholars as a way of engaging in educational discourse, noting that their use legitimises Pasifika people's local contexts and knowledge. ...
Pasifika student engagement and achievement remain an ongoing concern in Aotearoa New Zealand with inequitable outcomes a reality. This article opens with a short story about Amosa, a Samoan student, to highlight some of the ways inequitable outcomes can become a reality in educational contexts where curriculum content is disconnected from culture. We offer our introductory conceptualisation of a pedagogy of the heart situated in the field of Pasifika educational outcomes, as a possible response to such disconnection. Conceptualised as the practice of teaching both from and with the heart, a pedagogy of the heart is a culturally-based pedagogy and can be understood as a form of tautua or service. Underpinned by tautua and other key Pasifika values such as alofa (love) and osiosiga (reciprocity), we argue a pedagogy of the heart has the potential to lift Pasifika student engagement and achievement through utilising these values as a catalyst for learning. After addressing the pedagogy’s significance and how it might be implemented, we conclude with some reflective questions designed to encourage thinking about the pedagogy in philosophy and practice, while maintaining its adoption will increase opportunities for Pasifika students and their teachers’ to thrive.
... Pacific metaphors make links to nature, land, families, and traditions. These metaphors are active for Pacific peoples, who need little explanation to understand the connection between the vehicle terms, such as the Fonofale (Samoan house), Kakala (Tongan flower necklace), or Tivaevae (Cook Island quilt), and the topic term (for example, Albon, 2015;Johansson-Fua et al., 2012;Pulotu-Endermann, 2001;Sanga, 2014). The coconut or niu is an example of a universal Pacific metaphor because of its significance to many Pacific islands (Albon, 2015). ...
Metaphors are powerful devices for guiding the practice of learning advisors and are often used implicitly. However, personal metaphors can also mis-guide or constrain thinking about practice by encouraging a monocultural perspective. A paper by Golding et al. (2015) evaluated a variety of metaphors for their usefulness in guiding the practice of learning advisors. These evaluated metaphors have their origins in a Palagi or Western cultural worldview, dominant in Aotearoa New Zealand as a result of colonisation. This paper reports on a personal philosophical enquiry process, where I attempt to develop a metaphor that would help me, as a Palagi learner advisor, appreciate the Pacific worldview and potentially work with Pacific students in a more culturally responsive way. The developed metaphor is based on helping someone bake for a ‘bring a plate’ function, a social event where everyone invited provides food to share. It is based on my experiences, while also seeking to incorporate values embedded in Pacific cultures. This metaphor is offered as a contribution to philosophical discussions of learning advising: it is my ‘plate’ to help feed our academic community.
... All of the above topics are framed within a discussion of contemporary decolonizing movements across inter-related research, pedagogy, policy and "practice" spheres, by and with educators and researchers from Pacific island countries. This includes exploring visual metaphors for Pacific education, research approaches and pedagogies (Sanga, 2013) in Tonga, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands, examining the Reclaiming Pacific Education Initiative (Nabobo-Baba, 2012), and the Melanesian Spearhead Group's Alternative Indicators of Development initiative (Malvatumauri National Council of Chiefs 2012), and discussing some of the recent work of the OCIES. The course also explores the regional work of Vanuatu's Wan Smol Bag organisation and other collaborations between "internal" and "external" education actors, and ties it to multiple scales and types of education activity and actors. ...
In this paper, we critically interrogate the way in which comparative and international education coursework at two large institutions in Australia and New Zealand embody or challenge teleological, colonial, and Western/Northern-centric perspectives on education and development. Embedded within a broader and introspective examination of our roles as comparative and international educators in these universities, we deconstruct the intent behind our course objectives, readings, lecture content and assessment tasks, and place them into conversation with our own pedagogical self-reflections, observations of practice and student feedback. In doing so, we highlight ways in which we believe we are beginning to prepare a new generation of more critically conscious, and regionally-minded set of teachers, development practitioners and researchers. Specifically, by 'making the familiar strange,' and encouraging our students to co-construct knowledge, we argue we can begin to create actionable spaces which encourage an alternative reading of the world; something colleagues from across Oceania and further afield have long argued for as part of the decolonizing process. We also highlight how this process has led us to better recognize our own positionalities and epistemologies as CIE educators, in hopes that it can lead to an ongoing space for dialogue between educators and researchers within and beyond the region.
The authors facilitated three inter-professional mentorship workshops in Fiji and Tonga, which were part of a series of such events that they recently conducted across the Pacific region. These workshops, in turn, formed part of a larger, ongoing leadership initiative co-sponsored by several local, regional, and international organizations. The purpose of each workshop was to facilitate each multi-disciplinary cohort of leaders in attendance to begin to create an adaptable mentorship model that would fit their unique Pacific contexts. One task within these model-development sessions was for each cohort to create metaphors that they believed best encapsulated the essence of their specific mentorship approach. In this article, the authors summarize aspects of that creative process, present several metaphors that the three cohorts generated, and raise implications regarding future mentoring initiatives.
This paper offers a brief analysis of aspects related to the significance and the complexities of introducing “different” epistemologies in higher education teaching and learning. We start by introducing the metaphors of abyssal thinking, epistemic blindness and ecologies of knowledge in the work of Boaventura de Souza Santos. In the second part of the paper we use Santos’ metaphors to engage with the tensions of translating aboriginal epistemologies into non-aboriginal languages, categories and technologies. In the third part, we offer a situated illustration of an attempt to introduce epistemological pluralism in addressing central concepts in teaching in higher education. In our conclusion we emphasize that political, ontological and metaphysical questions need to be considered very carefully in the process of introducing different epistemologies into higher education.
Illustrating contexts for and voices of the Indigenous humanities, this essay aims to clarify what the Indigenous humanities can mean for reclaiming education as Indigenous knowledges and pedagogies. After interrogating the visual representation of education and place in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, the essay turns to media constructions of that same place as an exemplary site for understanding Aboriginal relations to the Canadian justice system, before sharing more general reflections on thinking place. The task of animating education is then resituated in the Indigenous humanities developed at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, as a set of intercultural and interdisciplinary theoretical and practical interventions designed to counter prevailing notions of colonial place. The essay concludes by placing education as promise and practice within the non-coercive normative orders offered by the United Nations. In multiple framings and locations of the Indigenous humanities, the essay aims to help readers to meet the challenges they themselves face as educators, learners, scholars, activists.
Educational researchers and practitioners are frequently asking questions about how better to understand educational theory and practice. Through the years, they have employed a variety of both quantitative and qualitative methods to elucidate the world of education. In this article, the author explores the epistemological legitimacy of metaphor analysis as a viable means for qualitative educational inquiry. In so doing, he explores the concepts of the theory of abduction, educational research and social constructivism, categories of metaphors, and metaphorical analysis in educational research. In addition, a review of the literature on educational research that uses metaphor analysis as the primary methodology revealed five major themes.
Metaphors help designers to understand unfamiliar design problems by juxtaposing them with known situations. Retrieving concepts from metaphors demands creative thinking. While the importance of this heuristic has been acknowledged in design, more research is needed to appreciate its contribution to design practice. This investigation aims to assess metaphor use by students in design problem solving, with a particular focus on design creativity. Relationships between factors of creativity and factors of metaphors were submitted for statistical analyses. Findings show that innovation is the most significant factor characterizing design creativity, followed by utility and aesthetics. On the other hand, the synthesis of design solutions is the stronger factor of the use of metaphors, and conceptual thinking the weakest. Results also demonstrate that metaphors play an important role in design creativity. Analysis of design problems was the predictor that had a unique contribution to innovation and general creativity.
Resilience is the magnitude of disturbance that can be tolerated before a socioecological system (SES) moves to a different
region of state space controlled by a different set of processes. Resilience has multiple levels of meaning: as a metaphor
related to sustainability, as a property of dynamic models, and as a measurable quantity that can be assessed in field studies
of SES. The operational indicators of resilience have, however, received little attention in the literature. To assess a system's
resilience, one must specify which system configuration and which disturbances are of interest. This paper compares resilience
properties in two contrasting SES, lake districts and rangelands, with respect to the following three general features: (a)
The ability of an SES to stay in the domain of attraction is related to slowly changing variables, or slowly changing disturbance
regimes, which control the boundaries of the domain of attraction or the frequency of events that could push the system across
the boundaries. Examples are soil phosphorus content in lake districts woody vegetation cover in rangelands, and property
rights systems that affect land use in both lake districts and rangelands. (b) The ability of an SES to self-organize is related
to the extent to which reorganization is endogenous rather than forced by external drivers. Self-organization is enhanced
by coevolved ecosystem components and the presence of social networks that facilitate innovative problem solving. (c) The
adaptive capacity of an SES is related to the existence of mechanisms for the evolution of novelty or learning. Examples include
biodiversity at multiple scales and the existence of institutions that facilitate experimentation, discovery, and innovation.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s theory of metaphor (1980, 1999) provides a basis for describing everyday cognitive structures using linguistic models and thus, making it possible to uncover both individual and collective patterns of thought and action. Lakoff and Johnson have not, however, developed a workable system for carrying out qualitative research. This paper outlines the fundamentals of this approach and proposes a procedure for the reconstruction of metaphorical concepts. As is normally the case in qualitative research, such guidelines can only ever represent the interplay between the ability of the researcher to understand the sense of things and the rules of the methodology. An overview of the typical interpretations that a metaphor analysis allows is also given. Key Words: Metaphor Analysis, Subjectivity, Hermeneutics, and Qualitative Research
Decision research in psychology has traditionally been influenced by the \textit{homo oeconomicus} metaphor with its emphasis on normative models and deviations from the predictions of those models. In contrast, the principal metaphor of cognitive psychology conceptualizes humans as `information processors', employing processes of perception, memory, categorization, problem solving and so on. Many of the processes described in cognitive theories are similar to those involved in decision making, and thus increasing cross-fertilization between the two areas is an important endeavour. A wide range of models and metaphors has been proposed to explain and describe `information processing' and many models have been applied to decision making in ingenious ways. This special issue encourages cross-fertilization between cognitive psychology and decision research by providing an overview of current perspectives in one area that continues to highlight the benefits of the synergistic approach: cognitive modeling of multi-attribute decision making. In this introduction we discuss aspects of the cognitive system that need to be considered when modeling multi-attribute decision making (e.g., automatic versus controlled processing, learning and memory constraints, metacognition) and illustrate how such aspects are incorporated into the approaches proposed by contributors to the special issue. We end by discussing the challenges posed by the contrasting and sometimes incompatible assumptions of the models and metaphors.
Metaphors are widely employed to describe relationships with indigenous languages. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, native speakers of Maori tend to describe language as an object, whereas newly-fluent speakers of Maori prefer to employ metaphors of process, describing language as a journey, or as food or water. Comparing these metaphors with variants used by Native Americans reveals an inverse relationship: the more speakers and learners there are of a language the more the metaphors focus on the benefits the language has for the individual, and conversely, the fewer speakers and learners there are of a language the more the metaphors employed tend to focus on the benefits language learning has for the future of the language. 1 What is a metaphor? "Metaphors are really statements based on some kind of analogy where two things are compared to each other" (St. Clair, 2000, p. 85). We use metaphors everyday in talking about all sorts of things. When we describe our boss as 'a big pussycat' we know he isn't really a cat, but a pushover, a softy. When some-one is 'going up in the world' they are not literally moving upwards, but gaining a more advantageous position either through better pay, job, or marriage. These two examples illustrate two of our perceptions about metaphors. Metaphors such as the one about the pussycat are often perceived as extra niceties of a language, not central to meaning or thought processes. If this sort of metaphor wasn't available to use we would be able to use other words to explain what we mean. Conversely, metaphors like the one about 'going up in the world' are so in-grained in our language that we hardly recognize them as metaphors until they are pointed out to us. Over the last twenty years metaphor has received a great deal of attention in the field of cognitive linguistics. In their seminal work Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson (1980, p. 2) explain that, "metaphor is pervasive in every-day life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature." Work done by them and others shows that our use of metaphor is much more pervasive than we realize (see St. Clair, 2000, p. 86) and there are complex and internally consistent interrelationships between groups of meta-phors. These analyses bring to light how metaphor can "create a reality rather than simply to give us a way of conceptualizing a preexisting reality" (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 144). In other words metaphors not only reflect our ideas but also shape the way we think. Accordingly, metaphors have an important role in shaping our epistemological framework.
Modern Western European ways of thinking are based on a print culture that uses verbal metaphors, and indigenous ways of thinking are based on an oral culture that uses visual metaphors. Visual metaphors provide a dominant mode of information processing and are used among indigenous groups to share cultural knowledge, yet Western culture is oblivious to it. One way of knowing involves reading people through nonverbal communication, but in Western culture, nonverbal communication can be virtually invisible. Problems occur when knowing and sensitive children from oral cultures such as American Indians are judged by people from cultures that do not know much about visual thinking. These children are aware of visual space, are sensitive to nonverbal communication, and understand that silence communicates. In writing English compositions for school, these children do not use the syllogistic reasoning of Aristotle because it is not part of their cultural knowledge, nor do they use the forms of logic that underlie the classical tradition of rhetoric. These students' writings have been criticized by their teachers as not having any structure. The fact that their structure is based on visual metaphor goes unnoticed. Teachers must be aware of the distinction between these two types of metaphors if they are to understand how indigenous people learn. Two dominant American Indian metaphors--the journey and the Quaternity (recurrence of the number four)--are discussed, and aspects of visual literacy that inform both aesthetics and the psychology of visual thinking are examined. (Contains 43 references.) (TD)
Rationales for using humor in classroom teaching and normative patterns of teachers' humor usage are presented. Several questions are addressed using pertinent research findings as evidence: Does teaching with humor enhance students' attention? Does using humor improve the classroom environment and make learning more enjoyable? Does using humor in the classroom help children learn? Does using classroom humor improve students' creativity? Does using humor in testing lower students' anxiety and promote improved test performance? Should teachers avoid certain types of humor? Guidelines for using humor in classroom teaching are offered.
Apres une presentation generale du colonianisme, l'A. etudie plus precisemment son impact sur le systeme educatif du Pacifique Sud en abordant notamment l'etude des programmes d'enseignement, de l'enseignement post-secondaire et du financement
The purpose of this study is to contribute to the debate about the appropriateness of an outcomes - based education (OBE) model for curriculum reform in Solomon Islands. A shift from a curriculum defined by subject content to a curriculum defined by what learners are expected to know, understand, be able to do and appreciate has been promoted. This belief has been highlighted in the Solomon Islands National Education Strategic Plans (2004 -2006 & 2007 -2009), Education Strategic Framework (2007 - 2015) and the approved National Curriculum Statement.
Taking an interpretive-constructivist approach, the study employed a qualitative case study research methodology. The study used a purposeful sample of key curriculum stakeholders, including science teachers, science lecturers, school principal, education officials and public servants who were participating in the reform. Focus group conversation and one-on-one interviews were conducted using semi-structured questions. Interviews were conducted in Solomon Islands Pijin, recorded and transcribed for analysis. Data was collected in Honiara, Solomon Islands, from June to July 2009.
This study explores the conceptualisation of outcomes-based education in a Solomon Islands context and its implication in the development of outcomes-based science curriculum. It examines the relevance and appropriateness of outcomes-based science curriculum to post-school real life situations. The research also explores the extent to which Outcomes-Based Science Curriculum could be effectively taught, learnt and assessed, and how students' performance, progress and achievements could be efficiently monitored, recorded and reported. The study also discusses potential problems, issues and challenges that might impede the implementation process and concludes with how these obstacles could be solved or mitigated.
What does it mean to be “indigenous”? Is indigeneity a matter of physical “space”? Or is it a cognitive-cultural “place”? Or both? How do Islanders negotiate indigeneity in a time of transnational and interisland migration and cultural conflict? I examine these and related issues through the lens of recent events in the Solomon Islands, including the historical pattern of interisland migration, the recent ethnic cleansing cultural rupture, and the resulting dialogue about identity and indigeneity among Solomon Islanders living abroad and at home via the internet.
We examine Kwara‘ae (Solomon Islands) indigenous epistemology and indigenous critical praxis, including sources of knowledge and strategies for validating and critiquing evidence and knowledge construction. To illustrate indigenous epistemology in action, we focus on the Kwara‘ae Genealogy Project, a research effort by rural villagers aimed at creating an indigenous written account of Kwara‘ ae culture. In recording, (re)constructing, and writing Kwara‘ae culture, project members are not only doing indigenous epistemology, but also reflecting on and critiquing their own indigenous strategies for knowledge creation. We hope that the work illustrated here will inspire other Native Pacific Islander scholars to carry out research on their native or indigenous epistemologies.
The use of metaphors in qualitative research provides an opportunity to examine phenomena from a unique and creative perspective. Metaphors can be used to provide structure to the data; to understand a familiar process in a new light; to identify situation-specific interventions; and to evoke emotion. Misuse of metaphors may detract from the intended research message. Mixing metaphors, failing to follow through with metaphors, and using metaphors that do not fit the data can misrepresent the data. The choice to use metaphors should not become a self-serving attempt at creativity that supersedes subject and substance. At their best, metaphors illuminate the meanings of experiences; at their worst, metaphors distort or obscure the essences of them.
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