What matters: teaching and metaphor

This work outlines an ecology of meaning in which metaphor plays a central role. Its purpose is to suggest how teachers, through ongoing reflection of meaning-making in the classroom, might come to a new understanding of a Freirean dialogical praxis. To support such reflection, the thesis develops a phenomenological theory of meaning that characterizes the various agents of meaning-making as interdependent. It is especially concerned with the following elements: being, meaning, subjectivity, language, and metaphor, where the latter is understood not as a literary trope but a fundamental mode of communication among entities of all kinds. Formally, the argument is developed using the tools of Lyric Philosophy, in which the writer’s own voice is juxtaposed with others in such a way that meaning emerges through the tension between the two. A narrative literature review provides an alternative access route to some key concepts.