Role of the deaf teacher: image schemata and metaphors on education

Abstract

In the context of the education of deaf person, the participation of deaf teachers in the classroom and the use of metaphors as a strategy to analyze teaching cognition, this article describes the concepts of school, student and teaching role. Seven deaf teachers who were users of sign language participated in this phenomenological and qualitative study. The data collection was taken from two tasks, the drawings’ production and metaphors’ production. The analysis was focused on metaphor’s identification and their image schemes’ description. The results show the metaphors related to the professional role and the concepts of student, teacher and school. The study concludes that the representations constructed by deaf teachers reflect elements of teacher cognition, sign language, and deaf culture.