Examining Indonesian Students’ Conceptualizations of Their EFL Teacher Roles through Metaphor Analysis

Abstract

Different roles have been attributed to teachers; from knowledge transmitter to caregiver. These roles are intertwined with one another and their complexity has attracted numerous researchers to investigate. In spite of the extensive literature and studies on teacher roles, very few studies have highlighted the complexity and changing roles of teachers from students' points of view. Whereas, students are the main body of learning, so their conceptualizations to describe their EFL teachers‟ roles are important and should be included. This study explores students‟ conceptualizations of EFL teacher roles through metaphor analysis to gain clearer insight on teacher roles. The study focuses on how students describe their English teacher roles and draw emerging themes from the metaphors. The data of this study were collected by a written prompt “my English teacher is like... because...” from 235 Junior High School students. Through thematic analysis, the study reveals that the teacher played many roles based on students‟ conceptualizations through metaphors. These imply that teacher professional development and teacher competence become a concern in order to optimize the teachers‟ roles.