Teachers’ Beliefs Regarding their Professional Role: A Gardener, Lighthouse or Circus Director?

The paper describes a study of teachers’ beliefs and conceptions of their professional role, investigated through metaphors. The Estonian lower secondary school subject teachers (N= 551) were asked to find a metaphor that characterises the teacher's role and to explain the content of this specific metaphor. Metaphors were classified and analysed based on the model proposed by Beijaard, Verloop and Vermunt (2000). Significant differences were found in the conception of the role of mathematics teachers and teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL). At the same time, there were no relationships observed between role conceptions and teachers’ ages and length of teaching practice.