Social Media in Pedagogical Context: A Study on a Finnish and a Greek Teacher's Metaphors

This study discusses the meanings underlying a Finnish and a Greek language teacher's pedagogical integration of social media. As the research spans across the physical and the virtual pedagogical meeting, our review of the literature is also based on a two-level approach. The first level links metaphor with the pedagogical thinking, being the set of values and purposes underlying teachers' decisions. The second examines the meanings of the digital deriving from arguments that seek to explain the relationship between pedagogy and technology. In this study the authors view metaphors as research vehicles and apply content analysis to draw upon the Finnish and the Greek language teacher's speech and make their meanings visible. To this end, the authors analyze and discuss findings of data resulting from two semi-structured interviews. The patterns arising from the discussion of digitally enhanced learning experiences indicate that metaphors can be shared, reflecting overlaps in notional categories (e.g., sociality and action). More powerful metaphors relate to context-dependent situations. These powerful metaphors emerge when issues characterizing the local school culture are tackled in the teachers' talk.