CI 590 MMA, Fall 2016
Professor: David Brown
When: Wednesdays, 5:00 to 7:50 pm
Where: 4F Education Building
CRN: 66094

Traditional views of metaphor and analogy see them simply as linguistic figures of speech, such as “He was a wolf” or “The car was like a battering ram,” used to spice up otherwise literal discourse.  More recent views see metaphorical and analogical thought as central in both discourse and cognition.  Constructivism is currently the dominant paradigm on learning in the content areas, drawing on the idea that students construct new understandings based on existing understandings. If this is the case, then a primary engine of such construction must be analogical and metaphorical reasoning – drawing on existing understandings of ideas and extending those to other ideas perceived as similar. This course will explore recent perspectives on metaphorical, model-based, and analogical thought and discourse, how these views apply to the development of understandings in content areas, and how instruction can take advantage of these new perspectives to better help students develop understandings of new ideas.