Understanding Language Learners’ Perceptions of Teachers’ Roles in Online Education: A Metaphor Analysis

Abstract

This study investigates language learners’ perception of Turkish teachers’ roles in an online setting using metaphor analysis. The aim of this qualitative study was to see how learners viewed their teachers’ roles in the setting. Using this data collection tool through convenient sampling, this study elicited 161 language learners’ perceptions of teachers’ role in an online context during the COVID-19 era between December and January 2020. Analyzing the data, the researchers came up with 10 different conceptual metaphors depicting learners’ beliefs about their teachers’ roles. The results identified some differences between how learners view teachers’ roles in an online mode of education compared to the conventional one as other studies suggest. The implications of these findings for teachers in general and language teachers in particular are discussed, highlighting what can be done to cushion the adverse effects of this novel medium of instruction.

Plain language summary

What do language learners think about the roles their teachers adopt in an online setting?

In 2019, a pandemic, COVID-19, introduced sweeping and potentially irreversible changes to many aspects of our lives, including education. COVID-19 expedited the adoption of online education in every corner of the world (WHO, 2020). However, this rapid transition to the online mode of delivery, despite some likely advantages, created havoc, as educational institutions had to quickly divert from their traditional modes of education to the online mode regardless of the country or educational setting. Naturally, under such circumstances, learners might expect more support and are highly likely to believe that their teachers should also act differently. Understanding what roles learners believe their teachers employ and what roles they should assume can be conducive to a smoother transition from the earlier traditional mode of education to the online one. Furthermore, it can muster the support system that needs to be in place. In this study, we share learners’ perceptions of teachers’ roles. The findings can help policymakers, teachers, and students to make better sense of the online context of teaching and learning.

Keywords

metaphor analysis teachers’ roles learners’ perceptions online education language learners

Introduction

In 2019, a pandemic, COVID-19, introduced sweeping and potentially irreversible changes to many aspects of our lives, including education. COVID-19 expedited the adoption of online education in every corner of the world (World Health Organization [WHO], 2020). However, this rapid transition to the online mode of delivery, despite some likely advantages, created havoc, as educational institutions had to quickly divert from their traditional modes of education to the online mode regardless of the country or educational setting (Duran, 2021; Kathula, 2020; Werner & Woessmann, 2023). Naturally, under such circumstances, learners might expect more support and are highly likely to believe that their teachers should also act differently. Understanding what roles learners believe their teachers should employ can be conducive to a smoother transition from the earlier traditional mode of education to the online one. Furthermore, it can muster the support system that needs to be in place.

To understand learners’ beliefs about teachers’ roles, we need to study beliefs and their significance. This is especially essential to develop a deeper understanding of the teaching and learning context in an educational setting (Barcelos, 2003; Lou & Noels, 2019; Pajares, 1992). It is, therefore, crucial for researchers to consider the beliefs that learners hold about that context in general and COVID-19-inflicted contexts in particular. Doing so allows us to gain insight into the prior knowledge and experiences that learners bring with them into this context (Wan et al., 2011). It is evident that the beliefs held by learners about learning and teaching processes have a considerable bearing on education, as they can shape learners’ perceptions, attitudes and behavior (Gao & Cui, 2024), promote a sense of tolerance, mutual understanding and even empathy (Chowdhury & Fernando, 2014; McAllister & Irvine, 2002), help stakeholders evaluate different viewpoints and hence develop critical thinking skills (Lailiyah & Wediyantoro, 2021; Stupple et al., 2017), and even address social issues (Gürsoy & Çelik, 2022). Interestingly, all these concepts are what learners experience in online education. For instance, unstable internet connections as a major problem for some students, especially in smaller cities, can affect their attitudes toward this mode of education in general and language learning in particular.

Belief studies focus on the attitudes, perceptions, and expectations that learners hold about many aspects of educational contexts. Researchers have explored learners’ beliefs in diverse realms, such as learners’ beliefs about language learning and achievement (Ellis, 2008; Pirhonen, 2022; Umino, 2023), the impact of culture on learners’ beliefs (Önalan, 2005; Sato & Storch 2022), learners’ beliefs about their own roles (Kinchin, 2004) and their teachers’ roles (Askarzadeh-Torghabeh et al., 2009; Guerrero & Villamil, 2002; Wan et al., 2011), teachers’ beliefs about their own practice and roles (Ahonen et al., 2014; Nespor, 1987) and even their characteristics (Borg, 2006). In this research, we will specifically focus on learners’ beliefs about teachers’ roles in online teaching and what expectations can result from the beliefs they hold, and to do so, we will take a constructivist epistemological stance, as we view knowledge as a socially constructed, context dependent phenomenon that is shaped by the learners (Liu & Matthews, 2005). Using a qualitative research method paradigm will help us explore the meanings and perspectives of the participants’ beliefs about teachers’ roles. The significance of the study lies in the potential it offers to scrutinize teachers’ roles and how learners view them as they experience a novel mode of education first-hand. This is particularly important as it ultimately aims to help teachers see themselves through their learners’ spectacles.

To bridge the gap and elicit leaners’ beliefs about teachers’ roles in an online tertiary-level context, the researchers had the participants in the study use a metaphor, which is an increasingly popular tool researchers use to gain better insight into learners’ mental models of a particular concept or phenomenon (Wan et al., 2011). Using a metaphor, the participants can conceptualize their beliefs and elucidate the assumptions that shape their beliefs. Even though metaphor analysis is not the only way to elicit learners’ views, as Wan et al., claim, it can be useful in sensitive cases as when learners want to share their opinion about their teachers, they can indirectly say how they view things and save “face” at the same time. Studying the metaphors Turkish learners use can help us understand their expectations, and compare and contrast them with those of their counterparts from other cultural or linguistic backgrounds. To analyze the metaphors, the researcher will use the metaphorical analysis offered by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). As this research focuses on teachers’ roles, the researchers have refrained from dwelling on belief studies in the next section and devoted more space to metaphor analysis and the extant literature on teachers’ roles using this tool.

Teachers’ Roles Through the Lens of Metaphor Analysis

Cameron and Low (1999) compared and contrasted two epistemologies in metaphor use and assessment. They pinpointed how “experientialist” metaphors are different from “constructivist” metaphors. The logical positivist paradigm, or experientialist paradigm, views metaphors as linguistic expressions used to describe one thing in terms of another. This approach assumes that language is a tool for describing the world and that the meaning of language can be derived from the literal meanings of its component parts (Cameron & Low, p. 78). The cognitive/constructivist paradigm, on the other hand, views metaphors as fundamental to human thought and cognition. The approach assumes that metaphors are not just linguistic expressions but are also a way of thinking about and understanding the world, a view also supported by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Cameron and Low (1999). Although linguistic metaphors are an important aspect of many literary and rhetorical devices, cognitive metaphors are fundamental to human thought and understanding, which is why we focus on this kind of metaphor as some scholars suggest (Cameron & Low, 1999; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). In this sense, we will employ cognitive epistemology to study learners’ beliefs when dealing with their linguistic metaphors and their underlying conceptual mappings.

Studying beliefs in second language learning involves exploring perceptions, beliefs and attitudes toward language learning and other aspects of second language acquisition. There are some common ways to explore people’s beliefs, and different scholars have used and justified the employment of tools such as questionnaires and surveys (Horwitz, et al., 1986; Vahdani Sanavi & Nemati, 2014), interviews (Gu & Schweisfurth, 2006; Speer, 2005), focus groups (Kitzinger, 2005; Nyumba et al., 2018; Reeve et al., 2016; Smithson, 2000), vignettes (Meijer et al., 2023; Stravakou & Lozgka, 2018), case studies and metaphor analysis (Askarzadeh-Torghabeh et al., 2009; Guerrero & Villamil, 2002; Wan et al., 2011). For the purposes of this research, as mentioned earlier because it can help protect the learners’“face,” we will be using metaphor analysis.

Metaphor analysis has several advantages over other data collection tools. These advantages comprise accessibility (G. Low & Durán, 2014), pervasiveness in people’s lives (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), flexibility (Cameron & Low, 1999, Kramsch, 2013; Littlemore, 2003), cross-cultural applicability (Littlemore, 2003) and, more importantly, especially for the purpose of this research, the provision of rich and insightful data (Kramsch, 2013). Overall, many studies provide empirical evidence for the claims they make about the benefits of using metaphorical analysis to understand learners’ beliefs and attitudes toward concepts in language learning (Avidov-Ungar et al., 2022; Jensen et al., 2021; Wan et al., 2011). Taking the widespread appeal to metaphors, we also take Saban’s (2006) identification of some characteristics of metaphors that we find useful for our purposes, namely, a medium of reflection, a tool for evaluation, a research tool, an instrument of discovery, and a springboard for change. These can be some major reasons why metaphorical analysis can be an ideal way of collecting data regarding learners’ beliefs.

The use of metaphor analysis can have its share of disadvantages too. Lewin-Jones (2017) asserts that we are not certain whether a metaphor is the presentation of the extant knowledge as is or the creation of new knowledge. Additionally, she mentions the possibility of different interpretations by different researchers based on the same metaphor employed. Also, it is further claimed that these different interpretations can be based on the different aspects of a concept because that concept might have common factors with other conceptual metaphors. All these caveats, however, can be enumerated for any kind of qualitative research tool (Rahman, 2016).

Despite some shortcomings which are characteristics of qualitative research approaches, and considering all the advantages discussed earlier, many researchers use metaphor analysis as a tool to elicit teachers’ beliefs about different aspects of language acquisition (Avidov-Ungar, 2016; Avidov-Ungar et al., 2022; Gök & Erdoğan, 2010; Zhao et al., 2010) and some about teachers’ and learners’ beliefs about teachers’ roles (Askarzadeh-Torghabeh et al., 2009; Guerrero & Villamil, 2000, 2002; Wan et al., 2011). Most of these scholars believe that the use of metaphor analysis can give teachers and learners insight into their identity and help them assess their thoughts and feelings regarding their teaching or learning, which can ultimately lead to performance enhancement (Zhao et al., 2010). For the purpose of our research, we will focus on three of these studies that are most relevant to our study, namely, those of Guerrero and Villamil (2002), Askarzadeh-Torghabeh et al. (2009), and Wan et al. (2011), after addressing teachers’ role in the literature.

Teachers’ roles have been studied by many researchers, mostly addressing professional development (Harmer, 2013, 2015; Larsen-Freeman & Anderson, 2013; Scrivener, 2011). For instance, Harmer (2013) refers to such teacher roles as controller, agency, prompter, assessor, resource and tutor. Alternatively, Larsen-Freeman and Anderson (2013) refer to teachers’ roles depending on the methodology they employ. For instance, a communicative approach teacher takes on the role of a facilitator, while a teacher in community language learning occupies a counselor position. Scrivener (2011), on the other hand, assigns three roles of explainer, involver and enabler to teachers, and within each “kind” of teacher, he suggests what roles the teachers can adopt.

Teachers’ roles have not been studied from the learners’ perspective as much as it has been carried out in teacher training or education courses. Some researchers have examined learners’ beliefs about teachers’ roles (Wan et al., 2011), and some have identified what teachers think about their own roles (Askarzadeh-Torghabeh et al., 2009; Guerrero & Villamil, 2002; Wan et al., 2011). Wan et al. (2011) explored Chinese learners’ beliefs about their teachers’ roles and the teachers’ reactions to them in addition to their own beliefs about their own roles. They initially collected learners’ and teachers’ beliefs about teachers’ roles and then had the teachers’ reactions to the mismatch between learners’ beliefs and those of the teachers. Wan et al. used metaphor analysis to explore learners’ beliefs about teacher roles and summarized teachers’ roles into eight categories (p. 408): teacher as provider, nurturer, devotee, instructor, cultural transmitter, authority, interest arouser, and co-worker. They claimed that knowing about learners’ beliefs about teacher roles can lead to finding ways to resolve the mismatches that can soften the classroom atmosphere, as other researchers (Oxford et al., 1998; Villamil & de Guerrero, 2005) also suggest.

The study carried out by Guerrero and Villamil (2002) involved data from teacher participants in a workshop in Puerto Rico. The results obtained from 22 participants led to 9 conceptual categories: teacher as co-operative leader, provider of knowledge, challenger, or agent of change, nurturer, innovator, provider of tools, artist, repairer, and gym instructor. Guerrero and Villamil discussed that these categories only suggest what teachers believe and, as such, do not represent what they actually practice. They further claimed that the “classical roles” of the teachers seemed to be the dominant ones as the metaphor they have used suggests.

Askarzadeh-Torghabeh et al. (2009) studied 47 Iranian teachers’ metaphors and also identified 9 categories for teachers: teacher as provider of knowledge, friend, organizer, nurturer, spiritual leader, entertainer, parent, counselor, and innovator. Interestingly, they claimed that gender affected the number of categories their participant teachers offered. The conceptual categories of “ORGANIZER” and “INNOVATOR” were two categories that they could not find in the male teachers’ data. Many of the conceptual categories used by Askarzadeh-Torghabeh et al. are those proposed by Guerrero and Villamil (2002). However, there is one, TEACHER AS SPIRITUAL LEADER, which seems to be a function of the cultural significance of religion in the teachers’ lives in the specific context in which the research was carried out.

Although the studies discussed above have explored teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning processes, there is a scarcity of research examining the beliefs of learners in online education concerning the role of teachers. To address this gap, the purpose of this study was to utilize metaphor analysis to investigate the beliefs of Turkish EFL students regarding the roles of teachers in online education as we found no previous studies exploring this aspect.

Research Question

The present study aims to answer the following research question:

How do learners metaphorically conceptualize EFL teachers’ roles in online education?

Methods

Participants

The study was carried out at the School of Foreign Languages at a state-run university in Türkiye. An announcement was made on Moodle to 672 pre-faculty students who had enrolled for the academic year (2019–2020) to inform them about the research project and collect data. 181 participants (females 127, males 34; mean age 19.79, mini. = 18, max. = 37, SD = 5.65) consented to take part in and shared their responses. Twenty of the responses were not analyzable so they were excluded from data analysis. Here is a breakdown of the participants and their levels according to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR):

Elementary students (A1 CEFR) 15

Pre-Intermediate students (A2 CEFR) 53

Intermediate students (B1 CEFR) 49

Upper-Intermediate students (B2 CEFR) 44

The participants were all students of social sciences, majoring in law (n = 42), English language and literature (n = 37), psychology (n = 23), international relations (n = 17), economics (n = 16), sociology (n = 15), business (n = 15), political science (n = 13), and history (n = 5). All participants were native speakers of Turkish.

Data Collection: Instrumentation and Procedures

This qualitative study was conducted among language learners of different proficiency levels at a state-run university in Ankara, Türkiye. The study was carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic, while the country was under strict social distancing rules and the students were not allowed to leave their homes.

Stage 1

The second researcher prepared and shared a video she had prepared to explain the concept of metaphor and entailment. A link on School Moodle was shared with all the students who were active during the semester. The learners were then asked whether they were willing to take part in the study as participants and were told they could stop their participation anytime during the data collection procedure. Those who agreed to participate would go to a Google link in the Moodle post. The consent form on the first page of the Google form informed the participants about their rights as to withdrawing their data, the nature and purpose of the research, confidentiality assurance, and data usage permissions.

Stage 2

We utilized a metaphor completion task (Supplemental Appendix A) to elicit learners’ metaphors and their justifications for their choices. The metaphor prompt was adapted from the study by Wan et al. (2011), as the goal was to elicit learners’ perceptions of teachers’ roles in an online context (Supplemental Appendix A; In distance/online education, a teacher is … because …). The phrase “in distance/online education” was added the prompt used by Wan et al. to address the context for the study. The student participants responded to the online survey the researchers had developed. One hundred eighty-one prep-faculty students majoring in different disciplines in social sciences got back to the researchers. However, 20 of these responses were not analyzable, making the total number of analyzable responses 161.

Stage 3

To obtain valuable insights into the underlying beliefs and assumptions that shape learners’ attitudes toward language teachers in an online setting, the prompt used in the survey was in Turkish because the researchers did not want the participants’ language proficiency to pose any barriers to their conceptual metaphors. This way, the learners could voice their beliefs using their metaphors and their rationale for using them, as Jin and Cortazzi (2011) asserted. Following the training and the data collection, the second researcher then translated the responses into English. After collecting the data, the second researcher translated the participants’ responses into English to prepare them for the next phase of data analysis. There were seven cases (3.78%) that needed to be referred to other experts to ensure the reliability and validity of the translated version. In all cases, the original translations were approved by an external expert, which obviated the need for a third reference.

Stage 4

To analyze the prompts elicited from the learners, Cameron and Low’s (1999, p. 88) approach and the steps Guerrero and Villamil (2002) followed were adopted in this study. We scrutinized the linguistic prompts provided by 181 students to form conceptual categories (Supplemental Appendices B–E). The general approach adopted was naming, or labeling the linguistic metaphors, sorting by clarifying and eliminating metaphors, categorizing the metaphors into higher categories and finally examining and analyzing the extant data.

Data Analysis

Blind coding was employed to minimize researchers’ familiarity with the participants. This could help prevent biases in coding and interpretation (Neuendorf, 2008). Before deciding to what conceptual category a metaphor belongs, researchers analyzed the tenor, what is being talked about, the vehicle, what is used to talk about the tenor, and the entailments, or the reasons why and how the learners thought the vehicle was linked to the tenor. The conceptual categories that we formed were also metaphorical as Cameron and Low suggested. Breaking the prompts down into their tenors, vehicles, and entailments for all language learners led to the formation of the overarching theme or conceptual metaphor. In other words, the exemplar metaphors paved the way for the formation of the conceptual categories. Some of the learners’ responses (20 in total) were excluded from data analysis because the vehicle used was not intelligible (e.g., In distance/online education a teacher important because if the teacher is unwilling, everything will go wrong.), no entailment was presented (e.g., In distance/online education a teacher is like a presentation in online teaching.) or no clear connection could be established between the entailment provided and the exemplar metaphors (e.g., In distance education, a teacher is like a guide because he teaches us a lot.). This made the total number of responses to 161 participants. Examining the remaining exemplar metaphors, the researchers had regular discussions to resolve any discrepancies between them. This also led to the inclusion of the same metaphors in different conceptual categories as their entailments. Overall, the conceptual categories were formed following the directives by G. D. Low and Todd (2010).

Similar to Guerrero and Villamil (2002), in our research, CAPITALS represent conceptual categories, and bold italics are used to refer to the metaphors the learners used. The participants’ entailments are enclosed in “single quotations marks.”

Findings

The results of the findings are presented below in 8 different categories in the elementary group, 10 in the pre-intermediate level, 9 in the intermediate level, and finally 10 in the upper-intermediate level. A summary of the results is presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Summary of the Conceptual Categories Across Different Proficiency Levels.

Categories: TEACHER AS	Upper-intermediate	Intermediate	Pre-intermediate	Elementary
AUTHORITY	7	6	9	3
NURTURER	6	8	7	—
GUIDE	9	12	7	3
RESOURCE	5	2	8	1
SAVIOR/MESSIAH	7	1	4	—
MULTITASKER/JUGGLER	1	4	3	2
FACILITATOR	2	6	6	1
DEVOTEE	3	-	2	2
ENTERTAINING SALESPERSON	1	2	2	2
SHOOTING STAR	3	8	5	1
Total	44	49	53	15

Teacher as Guide

The most prevalent category of TEACHER AS GUIDE (guide, door, North Star, compass, navigator, chef on TV, light, guide, tour guide, key, star, lamp, and orbit ) emphasizes that a teacher serves as a support system for the online education medium and that due to the challenges of online education, learners expect guidance and support. In the navigator metaphor, for instance, the teacher is expected to “help learners explore and appreciate their interests and passion.” In the star metaphor, the teacher “has to lighten from a very far distance but no matter how big it is, the distance poses a hindrance for it.” The metaphors here highlight the significance of guidance and support in this mode of education though sometimes cynically. In this category, teachers were not viewed as mere provider of information, but rather as symbols of direction, aspiration and motivation (navigator, key, door, compass, chef on TV, light, guide, tour guide, lamp, and orbit ). The compass metaphor, for instance, implies that the teacher is a “source of direction and guidance” for learners and helps learners navigate the challenges and uncertainties of online education and help learners find their way toward knowledge and success, which can capture the theme of “guidance” similar to that offered by the metaphors of guide, North Star, and tour guide .

Teacher as Authority

In this category, we included teachers who were thought to have a similar role to that in a familiar context of face-to-face language courses (magnet, traffic police, the North Pole, the spine, building block, shepherd, football coach, pillar, captain, administrator, lion, administrative unit, ruler, country leader, film director, commander, football manager, and director ). Teachers in this category are considered as giving directions (football coach, manager, country leader, and film director) and provide learners with stability helping them stay on course in their studies, as in the North Pole metaphor. The authority aspect of this category can best be viewed in the lion metaphor, where the teacher is “responsible for managing the class and ensuring that the students follow the guidelines and rules set forth.” One further concept that emerges and makes this category different from others is the passive status assigned to the learners in this category. This is not very different from the traditional role assigned to the teacher as that of a controller by Harmer (2013).

Teacher as Nurturer

The third most frequently referred to conceptual category was TEACHER AS NURTURER. The metaphors in this category (mother, a kind of servant, the sun, soil, family, friend, patience stone, nanny, father, close friend, a warrior, and parents ) had a common denominator in them all: the caring role of the teacher. The learners who employed the metaphors in this category likened the selfless and caring role of a teacher to that of a caregiver in providing guidance, support, and education. The mother and servant metaphors, for instance, underlined that teachers do online teaching “despite their own aversion to it,” or “not being appreciated for what they do.” The metaphors, therefore, refer to selfless people who do things behind the scene although what they do is normally taken for granted, similar to what a servant or a mother does. Despite the challenges and difficulties, teachers ensure that learners receive the quality education they deserve, helping them unlock their potential. The theme of dedication can also be represented by the parent metaphor as “… they prepare lots of content in English for us.” In this sense, the teacher can also be viewed as the element of change.

Teacher as Resource

In this category, the metaphors (digital book, the Internet, tree, farmer, book, computer, encyclopedia, visualized version of Siri, satellite, computer, school, and robot ) seem to showcase the teachers’ role as a source of information, providing the learners with what they need to achieve their academic success. However, unlike that in a GUIDE, the bond between the teacher and the learners does not seem to be emphasized. The major difference in this category is the presentation of material and its availability whenever they feel they need it. The digital book metaphor captures this when the learner suggests that a teacher “tries to teach students even if s/he does not know them well.” The metaphor not only highlights the important part a teacher plays as a source of knowledge, but it also highlights the limitations of distance education with regard to personal interaction and the rapport between the learners and their teachers. The encyclopedia , the internet, and the book metaphors similarly accentuate dependence “on both teacher and the Internet as the source of information during distance education,” suggesting that teachers are also reliable sources of information for “imparting knowledge” as “[they] learn whatever [they] need from the teacher.” The visualized version of Siri, satellite, computer, school, and robot also emphasize the resourcefulness of the teachers despite such shortcomings as lack of interaction or personal touch as “[the teacher] is there but [they] cannot touch or feel and may interact only via written text or audio means.”

Teacher as Savior

This category accentuates the teacher’s role as a rescuer, a vigilante or a hero, who can help learners fight off the seemingly insurmountable challenges of online education. The metaphors (hero, the Eye of Horus, Jesus Christ, prophet Khizr, Life jacket, life guard, port, light leaking into a dark tunnel, candle light, rescuer, gold, and medicine) all suggest that learners see their teachers in the likeness of Jesus Christ or prophet Khizr, which can be translated as holding teachers in high esteem. Overall, although in this category the participants use one deity-like entity to describe a teacher’s role, two concepts seem to dance through all of them: despair and redemption. The Eye of Horus likens the teacher to the ancient Egyptian symbol of protection and power. The almighty teacher seems to have the power to “see every difficulty” in the context of online education and “protect them.” Likewise, the life jacket metaphor is indicative of the helplessness of the learners in this context, wishing the teacher to “do their best to save [them] in the midst of the challenging conditions,” by responding to the mayday signal in the so-believed online education storm.

Teacher as Multitasker

In this category (orchestra conductor, squirrel, an orchestra conductor, athlete on hurdling, soldier, presenter in a contest, warrior, and spider ), teachers were considered jugglers of many tasks as apart from what a teacher is expected to do, they will have to deal with the burden of managing the classroom in a new setting and keeping abreast of the new developments. The teacher will have to deal with many things at the same time because “there are lots of instruments and students they have to control,” and “they are not only teachers but also have a home and a family. They need to cling well to each aspect.” This metaphor of spider pictures the fact that because of online education during COVID-19, teachers will have to take everything into account as they are based in their homes and not in their offices. The teacher therefore has to “keep fighting despite the many obstacles and confusion surrounding them.”

Teacher as Facilitator

Teachers in this category (consultant, copilot, presenter, Siri, bridge, fieldfare, and football trainer ) process and support the student’s efforts rather than dictating the learning experience. The teacher facilitates (bridge, copilot, and consultant ) students’ learning, as the category emphasizes the role of a teacher as that of a mediator (Siri, bridge, fieldfare, and football trainer ) rather than an originator, supporting students in learning through active engagement and collaboration. The fieldfare metaphor emphasizes that just as birds make plant reproduction possible through avian pollination, teachers make learning happen by working like a medium or a bridge by facilitating language learning among their students. This idea of facilitation of learning is also evinced in the metaphors of copilot and consultant. In the context of online education, this goes beyond the mere provision of classroom materials and includes helping students set goals and “show the path; but nevertheless, the success of learning mostly depends on learners’ commitment.”

Teacher as Devotee

This category suggests that teachers (Ant, the Sun, tree, violinist in the movie Titanic, captain, a person striving to dig a tunnel via a spoon, and a roly poly toy) devote themselves to the task of educating the learners regardless of the dire circumstances. This is apparent in the violinist in the movie Titanic as “The ship is sinking but still [he] keeps playing his violin.” Similarly, the sun metaphor suggests that despite the “struggles, [the teacher] burns herself to enlighten [the learners].” This category also appears in other research studies by Wan et al. (2011) and Pinnegar et al. (2011, p. 645) under the category of self-sacrifice because “the teacher is someone who is willing to sacrifice personal comfort or the comfort of other careers for the profession of teaching.” The metaphor ship captain also captures this concept of “nobility” by Pinnegar et al. (2011) as the captain “never leaves his/her ship even if it takes on water.” The teacher therefore is willing to make sacrifices to help all the learners aboard.

Teacher as Entertaining Salesperson

In this category (marketing expert, energy drink, commercial, lightning conductor, and simulator, song ), rather than taking the mere role of an amuser, the teacher is viewed as an “interest arouser” who needs to also present something for sale, that is the lesson to be offered. This cannot be achieved unless “they need to make the lesson interesting for students.” They need to motivate students’ participation via a variety of engaging activities such as the “employment of slides, [including interesting] content, and even intonation and speech rate.” The ENTERTAINING SALESPERSON “strives to attract learners into the lesson” and maintains a learner’s interest throughout the lesson using their sense of humor to create a positive learning environment and atmosphere during the interaction they have with their students. They can understand their audience and adapt their approach accordingly, adjusting the “sales pitch” to fit their learners’ needs in this particular context of education.

Teacher as Shooting Star

Finally, in this category of teacher as SHOOTING STAR (pencil, navigator, star, lion in a jungle with no other animals, artificial intelligence, train passing by, broken bucket, cage made of a misty glass, bird with a broken wing, tour guide, mute soloist, presenter, captain who is on a wild goose chase, stranger, call center, robot, and TV ), we have included all the metaphorical roles that were not positively assigned to teachers. Although teachers use their best endeavors to educate their learners, according to some learners, they seem to have a minimal effect on their learners. This category, therefore, in our study is devoted to all the metaphors that the participants employed to suggest that their teachers’ effect is limited due to the novel condition in which the learners find themselves. The metaphors reek of despair as in the cage of a misty glass , the learner feels “only a truly interested person can see inside when they look from outside,” or the broken bucket that suggests “teachers cannot teach what [learners] need despite their efforts and cannot impart much useful information.”

Discussion

This paper focused on teachers’ roles in online education as learners view them. Overall, we developed 10 different categories of teachers’ roles: AUTHORITY, NURTURER, GUIDE, RESOURCE, SAVIOR, MULTITASKER, FACILITATOR, DEVOTEE, ENTERTAINING SALESPERSON, and SHOOTING STAR. Many of the conceptual categories in our study match those of other researchers who performed similar studies. The various metaphorical conceptualizations in this study suggest that many of the categories correspond to those in Guerrero and Villamil (2002), Saban et al. (2007), Askarzadeh-Torghabeh et al. (2009), and Wan et al. (2011). The analysis of the data not only underscores the traditional expectations from their teachers in the online mode of teaching but also highlights learners’ demand for further support. Regarding the category with the highest frequency, TEACHER AS AUTHORITY, it might not be surprising, that many learners still believe that even in online education, teachers should adopt their traditional role of authority and leadership, and learners theirs at the receptive end of this teaching learning continuum. This implies that learners depend on their teacher pretty much in the same way workers rely on their managers for direction, and that without dependence on their organizing ability, they feel lost. Apart from the usual roles, the findings suggest the emergence of a strong negative sentiment among the learners in terms of teachers’ effectiveness in the roles they assume in online education.

In line with the findings in other studies, in many of the metaphors (AUTHORITY, NURTURER, GUIDE, RESOURCE, FACILITATOR, DEVOTEE, and ENTERTAINING SALESPERSON), we could detect an element of the traditional roles assigned to the teachers. Learners expect support, direction and guidance from their teachers in online education just as they do so in the conventional mode. Some of the categories in this study might have different wordings compared to the ones on which we based our research. For instance, our category of AUTHORITY matches that used by Wan et al. (2011) but differs from Guerrero and Villamil’s (2002) and Saban et al.’s (2007) PROVIDER OF KNOWLEDGE and Askarzadeh-Torghabe et al.’s (2009) SUPERIOR AUTHORITATIVE. Additionally, Askarzadeh-Torghabe et al. (2009), Guerrero and Villamil (2002), Saban et al. (2007), and Wan et al. (2011) respectively used entertainer, artist, amuser, and interest arouser to capture our ENTERTAINING SALESPERSON. Another example can be that of Saban et al. (2007, p. 131), who used the category of FACILITATOR to suggest that “the teacher’s main role is to make instructional materials and academic assistance available in the classroom (e.g., road map, torch) so that the students can take responsibility to construct their own knowledge.”

The findings suggest that most learners view teachers’ roles as important. However, unlike all other studies where the roles of the teachers were mostly viewed positively, in online education the metaphors seemed to teem with disappointments too. For instance, one learner claimed that although a star “has to lighten from a very far distance, no matter how big it is, the distance poses a hinder for it.” Alternatively, another asserted that a teacher’s effect is like that of a pencil and therefore not as lasting as expected since “[learners] are pieces of paper and each of our teachers is a pencil but due to online education, their mark is not as lasting as the one made by a pen.” Other metaphors (navigator, lion in a jungle with no other animals, artificial intelligence, train passing by, bird with a broken wing, tour guide, mute soloist, presenter, captain who is on a wild goose chase, stranger, call center, robot, and TV ) used in this category also underline learners’ helplessness in online education. As the findings suggest learners sometimes unplug themselves from the educational process as they find it unproductive both literally and metaphorically.

As mentioned earlier, our findings suggest that as opposed to other studies (Askarzadeh-Torghabeh et al., 2009; Guerrero & Villamil, 2002; Saban et al., 2007; Wan et al., 2011) where only positive roles were assigned to teachers, participants in our study believe that teachers’ roles can at times be ineffectual in online education under COVID-19 circumstances. Based on our findings, we can reasonably infer that like the conventional medium of face-to-face education, learners rely on their teachers to provide them with information, help them set goals and achieve them, facilitate their learning, and most importantly, help them overcome the novel challenges they face in the new mode of education. Additionally, the findings suggest that for learners, the online mode of education, although synchronous, is not effective partly because they think the challenges are insurmountable.

Although it can be claimed that this negativity is learners’ voicing of their concern and cannot be considered as a teacher role in and of itself, it is worth highlighting a point here. This role assignment does not mean what role the learners expect their teachers to assume, but rather what role they see their teachers are playing in an online setting in the Turkish context, “[learners] are pieces of paper and each of our teachers is a pencil but due to online education, their mark is not as lasting as the one made by a pen.”

The findings further suggest that this negativity could be attributed to the novelty of the situation and that learners’ emotional states might disappear as they get accustomed to this mode. That might be true but the emergence of this reaction is worth scrutinizing, and can pave the way for some post-Covid19 measures to lessen the adverse effects of this rapid change. Learners’ perceptions and understanding of education are heavily influenced by their previous experiences, a concept known as the “apprenticeship of observation”Lortie (2020), which can be argued to be another reason why learners react the way they do. This is not only confined to learners, as teachers, as our experience suggests, are also shackled by their own experiences of learning throughout their education. Therefore, evaluating this novel context can help educators understand this situation better and resolve the threats it poses.

Conclusion

A novel condition, COVID-19, brought about sweeping changes, especially to the mode of education. Although the apprenticeship of observation accentuates the significance of teachers’ preparation, it should be noted that the unprecedented changes introduced to the educational system dictate that policymakers, administrators, and educators critically reflect on their practices and assumptions regarding education. The findings revealed both positive and negative roles assigned to teachers in the Turkish context with positive roles of nine different kinds. However, one major category, SHOOTING STAR, suggests that learners can see their teachers’ role as insignificant if not harmful. This can mean teachers, educators and policymakers will have to better prepare themselves for such unprecedented circumstances to make language learning more appealing to all who embark on their learning journey.

Metaphor analysis proved to be an effective tool to figure out how learners’ see their teachers in an online setting. The metaphors used by the participants also paved the way for inferring how they felt about their teachers’ roles in online education. The findings of our study suggested that the majority of the learners feel they are in a helpless situation, which can be partly attributed to the novel situation in which they find themselves. Nevertheless, they rely on their teachers to help them out. This can mean teachers will have to find ways to make language learning more effective for their learners, which can happen through continuous professional development. In this sense, schools and administrations are obviously responsible for providing professional development opportunities for teachers.

Apart from adding to the effectiveness of using metaphor analysis to examine learners’ beliefs, the findings in this study can be helpful for teachers in online education in that they suggest what challenges learners face and what they expect their teachers to do to help them dispense with them. Comparing what roles teachers should adopt with what roles their learners expect them to employ can smooth this transition from the conventional mode of education to the online one. Failing to address this mismatch and to respond to the incongruence can pose serious problems of learners’ passivity or resistance, as Barcelos (2000) suggests. Such mismatches can also be addressed in teacher preparation and professional development to help educators critically reflect on their own assumptions and biases about education as well as compare them with those of their learners.

The major limitation of the study was that only learners’ views on teachers’ roles in online education were explored. Given that various stakeholders have interests in any learning and teaching context, it would be beneficial to incorporate the perspective of other stakeholders, such as instructors and parents, when examining the role of distance education. By conducting a metaphorical analysis and examining the ways in which these viewpoints intersect, align, or differ from those of the other parties, greater insight can be gained. In cases where there is a disparity between these beliefs and the educational experience, some learners may not receive the full benefits of the learning experience (Barcelos, 2000). Therefore, to move this study to the next level, one option would be to study other stakeholders’ beliefs and detect any mismatch or determine what needs to be done to benefit learners more. Alternatively, as mentioned in the introduction, belief studies in a host of other realms can be explored in online education. Future studies can address learners’ beliefs, learners’ proficiency levels of L1 and L2, learning outcomes, learners’ motivation and engagement, and the effect of culture on learners’ beliefs in an online setting. Also, seeing whether teachers practice what they believe could be something interesting to explore in future studies. Another limitation of the study was the sampling type used, which can affect the external validity of the research. A future study could employ a different sampling and possibly a more sizable sample to address generalizability issues.

One further thing that was not addressed in this study and nor in others, is the inclusion of more metaphors than one. The inclusion of several metaphors rather than one could prove beneficial too. In much the same way and resorting to the research in sociology, where people assume different roles, depending on their interactions with the people around them, we might not have to limit ourselves to eliciting only one role for our teachers. We could obviously have learners elaborate on this and see what roles they believe teachers should adopt in various contexts and situations, similar to how we might expect our parents to adopt different roles, for instance.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-sgo-10.1177_21582440241276199 – Supplemental material for Understanding Language Learners’ Perceptions of Teachers’ Roles in Online Education: A Metaphor Analysis

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-sgo-10.1177_21582440241276199 for Understanding Language Learners’ Perceptions of Teachers’ Roles in Online Education: A Metaphor Analysis by Reza Vahdani-Sanavi and Tuba Demirkol in SAGE Open

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our appreciation to all the participants without whose support we would not have been able to bring this study to fruition.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Ethics Statement

The research involving human participants underwent review and approval by the Ethics Committee of the Social Sciences University of Ankara (Approval no. 7925). All participants gave written consent after being fully informed about the study’s details and purpose.

ORCID iD

Reza Vahdani-Sanavi

Data Availability Statement

The data supporting the findings of this study are available upon request from the corresponding author.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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