You know the feeling when you hear something for the first time and it really resonates with you? The other day, my colleague Dr Emma Riordan and I had our co-taught tutorial with final-year BEd Gaeilge and German (Bachelor of Education Irish and German) students. The students will complete their degree this year and have already quite a teaching load in schools where they work as German and Irish teachers. But what does an orangutan keeper have to do with that?

In this session, we were talking about teacher identity and teaching philosophies, i.e. what they believe about themselves as teachers and about teaching. There are various approaches in the research area of teachers' beliefs - an area which Simon Borg refers to as "teacher cognition – the unobservable dimension of teachers’ professional lives" (Borg, 2019, p. 1) when it comes to how to make it visible. One approach is the use of metaphors (see e.g., Block, 1990; Kramsch, 2003; Fischer, 2016; Wan, Low & Li, 2011; Warford & Reeves, 2003; and many more). 

It is not surprising that use of metaphors is quite popular in research as well as in teacher education programmes. For Elliot W. Eisner, for instance, "nothing is more precise than the artistic use of language. Metaphoric precision is the central vehicle for revealing the qualitative aspects of life" (1978, p. 200). Therefore, I, too, asked the students to think of a metaphor that describes them best as a teacher. First, there was silence, followed by a bit of laughter and discussion that this is quite a difficult task and that they could not think of anything. And then eventually, it happened: The Orangutan Keeper entered the classroom.

When a student said that she sees herself somewhat like an orangutan keeper, everyone burst out laughing, including herself. After a while, she started to explain and provide more context to her metaphor. The orangutan keeper cares for the orangutans, especially for the younger ones, providing them with food (for thought?) and activities, and making sure they progress as they should. She engages with the orangutans on a daily basis, develops a close relationship with them and knows them so well that she can literally tell by looking at them how they feel, if they understand the instructions or if they need help. She creates an environment which suits the orangutans best - even if they are sometimes cheeky monkeys (and one could say: animals!) and everything becomes chaotic. The keeper knows how to engage with them to bring them back on track. And the orangutans, they know that they can trust their keeper and know they can rely on her; a very strong and caring bond develops over time. The aspect of caring - that they as well as their success is important to her - was strongly emphasised, not only by stating that "they are my little babies".  

Looking back at this event, the metaphor first caused a lot of laughter, mainly due to the fact - I assume - that orangutans were compared with students. This was soon, after an explanatory comment was added, replaced by amazement of how well this metaphor represented various students' conception of what it means to be a (good) teacher: Caring for your students, engaging with them, and accepting the chaos from time to time. 

This little situation really highlighted for me something that Schart and Backhaus (2003) wrote in relation to the "praktische Erkenntnis" - knowledge gained from practice: The student reflected about her practice and her acquired knowledge from practice by using a creative approach - a metaphor - to express her beliefs. Drawing from the orangutan keeper metaphor, and by exploring why she might have picked precisely this metaphor, she showed, as Schart and Backhaus conclude, that "praktische Erkenntnis", as part of teacher beliefs, is often and best articulated through narration and metaphors (2003, p. 186). The metaphor alone may have left all of us with more questions than answers, but in combination with her narration, it revealed the believes about herself as a teacher but also her believes about (good) teaching/teachers. 

While orangutans are not quite chimpanzees, the metaphor of the orangutan keeper made me straigth away think of Jane Goodall, probably the most known and most regarded expert on chimpanzees. Admittedly, I don't know much about Jane Goodall other than what I have consumed over the years in the news or in documentaries. I really only know (or think to know) two things: 

1) Her efforts and activism go far beyond chimpanzees but include all animals and the environment in general. If I think further about Jane Goodall, and user her as a metaphor for a teacher, this means also that teachers care about the greater good of education (the environment) as well as about other animals (other students in different classes).  

2) She seemed to have this amazing bond with the chimpanzees and treat them like she would treat humans. If there is anything we can ask for in education, it's humanity. I'm not worried about the future as long as there are enough orangutan keepers around.

Block, D. (1990). Student and teacher metaphor for language learning. In R. Ribe (Ed.), Towards a new decade (ELT): Novenes Jornades Pedagogiques per al 'ensenyament de /'Angles (pp. 30-42). ICE.

Borg, S. (2019). Language teacher cognition: Perspectives and debates. In X. Gao (eds.), Second handbook of english language teaching (pp. 1-23). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58542-0_59-1 

Eisner, E. W. (1979). The educational imagination. On the design and evaluation of school programs. Macmillan Publishing.

Fisher, L. (2015). Researching learners’ and teachers’ beliefs about language learning using metaphor. In S. Wortham, D. Kim & S. May (Eds.), Discourse and education. Encyclopedia of language and education (pp. 1-11). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02322-9_17-1 

Kramsch, C. (2003). Metaphor and the subjective construction of beliefs. In P. Kalaja, A. M. F. Barcelos (Eds.), Beliefs about SLA. New research approaches (pp. 109-128). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4751-0_5 

Schart, M., & Backhaus, A. (2003). Aktiv oder Passiv? Objekt oder Subjekt? Fragen zum Selbstverständnis von Forschenden und Lehrenden. Neue Beiträge zur Germanistik, 2(3), 182-192. 

Wan, W., Low, G. D., & Li, M. (2011). From students’ and teachers’ perspectives: Metaphor analysis of beliefs about EFL teachers’ roles. System, 39(3), 403-415. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2011.07.012 

Warford, M. K., & Reeves, J. (2003). Falling into it: Novice TESOL teacher thinking. Teachers and Teaching, 9(1), 47-66. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1116&context=teachlearnfacpub