Research argues that parents/teachers and learners work collaboratively and this active participation in scaffolded activities builds knowledge and extends understandings. However, researchers who have explored scaffolding as a pedagogic tool do not demonstrate how this tool looks in practice.
As a teacher educator, I introduce concepts like scaffolding as part of pre-service teachers’ theory of learning. The purpose of this article is to explore how the Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) concepts of semantic gravity and semantic waves, show modelling interactions that reveal the learning pathways leading to independent mastery of the task.
The study was conducted in 2020, which presented a unique opportunity to watch one teacher teach three Grade 3 learners online on a one-to-one basis, providing for comparisons between them. This qualitative study represented a case-study research design and employed data analysis using a semantic gravity translation device. Convenience sampling was used when selecting the participants. A story, ‘A visit to the dentist’, was used to identify the metaphors in the text.
Using semantic waves, I show how the teacher works with concepts, criteria, text resources and learner understanding. The analysis exposed pathways that could now be purposefully designed.
Further research is necessary to investigate the value of semantic waves as a means of enabling teachers to track these kinds of interaction.
The findings provide the means to demonstrating how semantic waves may assist teachers to design and operationalise learning pathways in ways that scaffolding cannot.
The Foundation Phase in South Africa includes learners between 5 and 9 years of age in Grades R to 3. Four categories of English, including ‘listening, speaking, reading and writing’, should be covered in the Foundation Phase (Department of Basic Education
Scaffolding, in a construction site, is a temporary structure used to support the maintenance and repair of buildings, bridges and other man-made structures (Jones & Thomas
The main research question addressed in this research study is: How does the LCT concept of semantic waves offer affordances for teaching scaffolding to pre-service teachers?
The sub-question is: How does the LCT concept of semantic waves offer pathways to track the kinds of interaction that result in learner independence?
I am presently collaborating with teachers
I used convenience sampling to locate participants for this study from the target population who meet certain criteria, such as: having access to Zoom and internet for 20 min daily, being in Grade 3 and being willing to participate. The sample consisted of four EHL Grade 3 learners within the age range of 8–9 years, living in Gauteng. The teachers selected to teach the overall course were volunteers who have an online Zoom platform setup and knowledge of creative writing skills. As they were volunteers, the individual teacher who was available to participate in the study only had under 1 year of teaching experience. The teacher in this study is Ms Carim, and the learners were Sue, Jayshree, Naseema and Batseba.
In this paper, I report on the lesson which addressed metaphors. This lesson was the introductory lesson to metaphors and the learners were required to identify metaphors in the story titled ‘A visit to the dentist’. Two methods of data collection were utilised: Zoom lesson recordings and an interview with the teacher. A progression of 20 lessons were Zoom-recorded for each of the four Grade 3 learners. One interview was conducted with the teacher after recording all the lessons. All lessons were recorded, transcribed, coded and analysed using a translation device of the LCT concept of the SG form. In doing so, certain semantic waves emerged.
The theoretical framework that informed this study is the socio-cultural theories of learning. Socio-cultural theories focus on learning as a socially based process, rather than an individual one. Thus individual work can be accommodated but only in the context of collaborative work (Vygotsky
The most frequently quoted explanation of ZPD is the following:
It is the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. (Vygotsky
These developmental processes can be differentiated in reference to actual and potential developmental levels. Vygotsky (
This paper draws on the concept of SG from LCT to analyse how the context-dependence of knowledge shifts over time in a lesson (Maton
Over the course of a lesson, teachers shift knowledge between abstracted and more contextually dependent forms. These shifts are usefully depicted on a semantic profile, according to the strength of SG. The pathways that SG takes over time can be represented graphically on a semantic profile. The strengthening and weakening of SG (on the y-axis) is plotted against time (on the x-axis). The semantic profile is plotted as a single line, illustrating shifts between complex concepts (weaker semantic gravity, SG–) and manifestations of personal experience and/or real-world examples (stronger semantic gravity, SG+) (Maton
Learning activities that focus on abstracted concepts, for instance how figures of speech may be used to evoke imagery in poetry would be characterised by SG–. These parts of the lesson could be depicted as a high flatline on a semantic profile (see line A in
Illustrative example of semantic profiles.
During the course of lessons, teachers mediate knowledge by making recurrent movements between more experiential and more abstract forms of knowledge (Maton
Semantic waves have been used extensively to trace the knowledge-building work teachers do in the lessons they teach. For example, Jackson (
In this study, I used a translation device (detailed in
Translation device that defines four strengths of semantic gravity used to code context-dependence of knowledge in a Grade 3 lesson on poetic devices.
Relative strength of semantic gravity | Indicators | Examples |
---|---|---|
Much weaker semantic gravity (SG– –) | The focus is on the abstract features of figures of speech. | ‘A metaphor is also a figurative language or a figure of speech.’ |
Weaker semantic gravity (SG–) | The focus is on categories, attributes and comparisons of the metaphor. | ‘Is that a metaphor?’ ‘Are we comparing afraid to anything?’ |
Stronger semantic gravity (SG+) | Focus is on examples of metaphors extracted from a story. | ‘The dentist’s chair was a submarine and it dropped lower and lower.’ |
Much stronger semantic gravity (SG++) | Focus is on examples of comparisons/metaphors constructed from the learner’s life experiences. | ‘So, you know, like when you swim in the salty ocean or not?’ |
SG, semantic gravity.
This translation device enables me to code interactions between the teacher and learners which are then plotted on a semantic profile. Coding all four lessons in terms of the relative strength and weakness of SG allowed for a detailed illustration of the pathways on a semantic wave. The shape of the semantic waves reveals how the teacher supports learners in making semantic shifts to identify and analyse metaphors, first together and then to make those shifts independently. When teachers take particular shaped semantic shifts with learners and learners then can replicate those moves, they demonstrate their learning independently.
In the section that follows, I analyse the learning pathways that the teacher traversed with three learners. The interaction in one lesson went beyond modelling the knowledge-building pathways to the learner traversing this pathway for herself.
A metaphor is a figurative statement taking the form of ‘an X is a Y’. Bowdle and Gentler (
The focus of the 20-min lessons is the oscillating SG in terms of metaphors as a figurative language device. The teacher’s overall goal in this lesson was to elicit the learners’ identification of metaphors within stories. As I coded the SG, I related the teacher’s questions to previous or successive questions and the learner’s responses. Two of the three lessons comprise four phases (summarised below) with the bulk of the time spent on phase three.
Task Orientation:
The teacher identifies the lesson as a focus on metaphors. The teacher defines a metaphor.
Academic Administration
Task Orientation:
The teacher/learner reads the story sentence by sentence. The learner identifies the metaphor in each instance. The learner underlines the sentence with the metaphor. The teacher moves on to the next sentence.
Conclusion: The teacher makes concluding statements about the lesson.
An analysis of SG makes known a more precise description of the interaction between teacher and learner. The teacher focuses exclusively on the story, ‘A visit to the dentist’, as an independent artefact and requires that the learners identify the metaphors using exact textual quotes. The tightly structured process moves learners from the definition of a metaphor into the identification of metaphors captured in a story. However, in the pedagogic space, the bases for approaching and relating to the text can vary, shifting along both the stronger and weaker SG continua.
Engaging in response to the identification of metaphors in a given text requires that learners demonstrate that they understand the implied comparison of the metaphor. In this particular text, ‘A visit to the dentist’, the weakening of the SG is supported by the teacher’s questions to focus learners on identifying the metaphor. Bringing in information from beyond the story, strengthened the SG, allowing learners to better understand the broader associations of the metaphor. In the lesson engagement that analysed this text, interaction around the identification of the metaphors from the story frequently integrated knowledge from the learner’s personal context to represent the implied comparison of the metaphor. Therefore, I did not find it entirely surprising that two of the three lessons contained sections of stronger SG in which the teacher engaged the learners’ experiences of visiting the dentist and of going to a mall. The analysis below refers to occurrences of stronger SG in pathways that went beyond the comparative nature of the metaphors in the text. In this analysis, the thick lines represent the learner’s turns, and the thin lines represent the teacher’s turns – together the line segments connect to represent semantic waves. Jayshree’s lesson (see
Semantic profile for Jayshree’s lesson.
Before traversing these two pathways, Ms Carim corrected Jayshree’s confusion between the simile and metaphor.
Very good! ‘Mom helped me rinse my mouth with warm salt water, and when I gargled, I choked. Salt water drained down my throat, and I was a swimmer in the salty ocean’. (pauses briefly)
I was like a swimmer in the salty ocean.
‘I was a swimmer’ not ‘I was like’, if I was ‘like’ then what would it be?
A simile.
Yes. So, what does the sentence say? ‘I was a swimmer in the salty ocean’. So that’s a metaphor, right?
General waving across the lesson includes the teacher reading from the text and learner identifying the metaphor as pertinent goals for the lesson. Further engagement between Ms Carim and Jayshree connects to a wave which weakens SG in order to conclude the topic on metaphors. At this point, Ms Carim asked Jayshree to explain what a metaphor is and she used her understanding of similes in her explanation – ‘a metaphor is something that describes something that and doesn’t include an “as” or a “like”#’; and when prompted for an example, she responded, ‘Hmm for example, “her heart is like gold”, then the simile is “her heart is like gold”. And the metaphor is “a heart is gold”.’ The end result is that Jayshree can identify a metaphor in text but does not necessarily see the broader associations or implied comparisons of the metaphor.
The analysis of Naseema’s lesson (see
Semantic profile for Naseema’s lesson.
Ms Carim’s focus changes to a new phrase from the story.
21 | Teacher | Right, let’s carry on. ‘Mom helped me rinse my mouth’. Are you looking at the page? |
22 | Naseema | Yes. |
23 | Teacher | Okay. ‘Mom helped me rinse my mouth with warm salt water, and when I gargled, I choked. Salt water drained down my throat, and I was a swimmer in the salty ocean’. So, in which one of those two sentences is the metaphor? Which part of that sentence is the metaphor, do you think? |
24 | Naseema | Umm. |
25 | Ms Carim | Okay, I’ll read to you again: ‘Salt water drained down my throat, and I was a swimmer in the salty ocean.’ |
26 | Naseema | Umm … the part … mommy helped me rinse my mouth. |
27 | Ms Carim | Yeah? |
28 | Naseema | … with warm salt water |
29 | Ms Carim | ‘[ |
30 | Naseema | He was using a metaphor |
31 | Ms Carim | So what … what is the metaphor? The ‘what part’ of the sentence, just use one word, then I’ll know. Are you failing to see? |
32 | Naseema | Umm, I was… |
33 | Ms Carim | Very good. ‘I was a swimmer in the salty ocean’. Can you underline that part? |
In the above extract, Ms Carim asked Naseema to identify the metaphor. The expected reaction failed to come, as Naseema was unsure. Ms Carim repeated the phrase from the story and Naseema began reading the phrase. The teacher repeated the phrase and then funnelled (Brodie Jina Modau
‘I don’t think she [
When asked why she did not ask Naseema to describe the comparison, Ms Carim said:
‘I think it’s because she seemed to get very uncomfortable when I did do this, and I thought leading her on would be a better approach so she wouldn’t feel uncomfortable as she really wanted to get things right.’
Sue’s lesson (see
Semantic profile for Sue’s lesson.
For much of the lesson (see
In describing her pedagogic decisions of this episode, in the interview, Ms Carim explained:
‘I used questions to sort of lead in the direction of thinking that having a “was” in a sentence doesn’t always mean that it will be a metaphor. I didn’t just want to tell her, but I wanted to allow her to figure that out for herself. I wanted her to realise this so that she understands that a metaphor is used for comparative reasons.’
Ms Carim later tests to see if Sue is still holding onto the misconception. In Turn 98, she asks, ‘Also is “the mall was very busy” a metaphor?’ This question generates more of an upward movement that is realised through Sue’s answer specifying that the vehicle is absent and therefore there is no comparison: ‘they’re not comparing the mall to anything’.
Even though Ms Carim makes connections to real-world experience, she engages the story as a task that requires precise interpretation. She directs Sue’s attention, focusing on the shift from the literal meaning to the metaphorical meaning in ways such as:
Identifying the metaphor as a ‘combinatorial item’ (Johnson & Pascual-Leone
Describing the implied comparison.
Ms Carim moves focus between conceptual criteria and text-based examples. By modelling a semantic wave with Sue, Sue corrects herself, clarifies criteria and then is able to speak more confidently about the task at hand, identifying and explaining metaphors. In the pathway illustrated by E on the semantic wave, Sue is now replicating the upward escalators that Ms Carim has modelled. She reads the phrase from the story, identifies the metaphor, and then describes the comparison without being asked to explain. Sue is working independently, and this process sets up conditions of possibility for her to produce her own imagery using metaphors.
The lesson analysis just described, demonstrates how Ms Carim modelled pathways that Sue could eventually traverse herself. While Jayshree’s lesson includes less successful pathways into learner independence regarding the metaphor, the lesson contained several examples of strong semantic pathways. These pathways of strong SG were less valued since they demonstrate how the lesson became more context specific and therefore did not fully focus on the implied comparison of the metaphor.
The important characteristics of this metaphor lesson included an analysis of how Ms Carim supported the learners’ identification of the metaphor in texts, and this required that the SG and semantic waves be analysed for the purpose of illustrating the teacher/learner interaction. From a socio-culturalist stance, the teacher and learners had created zones of proximal development for each other. Each learner worked within her ZPD, with Ms Carim through her role of mediating support, to assist each learner in identifying metaphors from the text. While Jayshree’s lesson and Naseema’s lesson adhered to the identification of the metaphors in a text only, and were able to meet the expectations the task elicited, they were less effective at transferring the comparative nature of the metaphor. Therefore, the lessons were also less effective at establishing the implied comparison in the metaphors represented in the story. In particular, lesson interaction between the teacher and learner explicitly connected the text to the metaphors in the story.
Teaching the learners how to identify metaphors depended on them relating the categorisation in a ‘– was a –’ sentence frame, and did not necessarily depend on the linking to the learners’ personal experiences to explain the comparison. Therefore, the task did not explicitly call for an understanding of the implied comparative value of the metaphor. I hoped, however, that the teacher would help learners to understand the comparison. The analysis of the lessons found that the lesson in which Ms Carim was focused on Sue identifying the metaphor and describing the comparison tended to address the implied comparison of the metaphor more thoroughly, and that Sue also tended to model the pathways created.
The analysis showed that the pathways modelled by Ms Carim played an important role in helping Sue to work independently when identifying and analysing metaphors from a text. The analysis also indicated that Ms Carim weakened the SG when addressing Sue’s misconception about the use of ‘was’, by using probing questions to enable her to identify a metaphor as a comparison between two things that are unrelated and to push her to describe this comparison. While all three lessons in the data set oscillated between strong and weak SG along a semantic wave, the rate of occurrence and relative value with which the teacher worked along these pathways was a distinguishing factor in the outcome of the interaction. Sue was able to understand the implied comparison in the metaphor without Ms Carim exploring her experiences of going to the dentist and the mall, but using the visit to the dentist and the mall allowed Jayshree to make some implied connections even though she relied more on the combinatorial rule to explain her understanding of the metaphor. While Ms Carim did not explicitly explore the combinatorial rule with Naseema, the verb ‘was’ presented criteria for her to look for when identifying a metaphor in a text.
Hammond and Gibbens (
I would like to thank Ms Carim, Sue, Naseema, Jayshree and Batseba for their participation and permission for this research project. I would also like to thank the Wits LCT Hub for valuable feedback on earlier drafts.
The author declares that no competing interest exists.
Z.J.A. declares that she is the sole author of this research article.
Ethical clearance was University of the Witwatersrand, Human Research Ethics Committee, Education, Approved, Risk Level: Minimal H20/11/24.
The research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or non-profit sectors.
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the author on reasonable request.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
A visit to the dentist
(Story with embedded metaphors)
(Jina Asvat
‘I woke up on Saturday morning with a toothache. Mom said that the tooth was a deep red volcano. Mom helped me rinse my mouth with warm salt water, and when I gargled, I choked. Saltwater drained down my throat, and I was a swimmer in the salty ocean. Mom said that it was time to visit the dentist. The dentist’s chair was a submarine, and it dropped lower and lower. I was afraid. I was a captive monkey to be analysed. The tools on the tray were a fence of strange wires that crisscrossed in a crazy pattern. The dentist was a masked scientist looking down from above. He lowered the chair again. I opened my mouth wide. He put strange wires into my mouth. The pain had disappeared, and I was a silver-lined cloud floating above. On the way home, we stopped at the pharmacy to buy the medication. Unfortunately, the mall was very busy. We were tiny fish swimming in a sea of people. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and go home. The drive home was a frustrating experience because the holiday traffic had turned the street into a parking lot. I promised to keep my teeth clean. I do not want to be a captive monkey ever again.’
58 | T | So, is he saying that he was swimming in the salty ocean? What is he comparing? |
59 | L | He’s comparing that when he gargles… |
60 | T | Yes … |
61 | L | [… |
62 | T | Yeah. So, you know like when you swim in the salty ocean or not? If you have before, already, you know you inhale that salt and you can taste this salt in your mouth and in your nose and even in your … you can feel it everywhere, isn’t it? |
63 | L | (Nods) |
64 | T | So that, that is what it means: ‘Mom said it was time to visit the dentist.’ Do you like the dentist? |
65 | L | Hmm. I’ve never been. |
66 | T | You’re lucky then. ‘The dentist’s chair was a submarine, and it dropped lower and lower.’ |
67 | L | Um. Was … the dentist’s chair |
68 | T | Yes. So, we are comparing the dentist’s chair to a submarine? Okay, now listen carefully to the next one: ‘I was afraid. I was a captive monkey to be analysed.’ |
69 | L | I was afraid. |
70 | T | Is that a metaphor? |
71 | L | Um. Yes. |
72 | T | Why? |
73 | L | Because it has the word |
74 | T | But are we comparing ‘I was afraid’ to anything? |
75 | L | No. |
76 | T | No. So, okay, so let’s look at the next one: ‘I was a captive monkey to be analysed.’ What do you think of that sentence? |
77 | L | That one is ‘was’ because they’re comparing the boy to a captive monkey. |
78 | T | Exactly. So can you see … can you see the difference between those two sentences? |
79 | L | (Nods) |
80 | T | Yeah. Did you manage to underline it, or must I wait for you? |
81 | L | I underlined. |
82 | T | Okay. ‘The tools on the tray were a fence of strange wires that crisscrossed in a crazy pattern.’ |
83 | L | And the tools on the tray were a fence of strange wires that crisscrossed in a crazy pattern, the[ |
84 | T | Very good, so what, because you’re comparing the tray to … |
85 | L | Um, the tray of the tools to ‘like a fence of strange wires that crisscrossed in a crazy pattern’. |
86 | T | Yes. ‘The dentist was a masked scientist looking down from above.’ |
87 | L | The dentist was a masked scientist looking down from above. |
88 | T | Yeah |
89 | L | So, they [are] comparing the dentist to a masked scientist who was looking down from above. |
90 | T | Okay, ‘He lowered the chair again. I opened my mouth wide. He put strange wires into my mouth. The pain had disappeared, and I was a sliver-lined cloud floating above.’ |
91 | L | ‘The pain that disappeared’ and ‘I was a silver-lined cloud floating above’. They[are] comparing … the boy is comparing himself ‘to a sliver-lined cloud floating from above’. |
92 | T | Could you perhaps explain what he means there, though? Why is he saying [he] is floating above? |
93 | L | Um, because the dentist lifted the chair. |
94 | T | Yeah, it could be that also, that’s not a bad observation. But it could also be that, you know, like sometimes when the dentist injects in your mouth and then they numb the pain in it [and it] feels like you’re floating because you can’t feel anything. But it could be also like you said, he lowered the chair and then he felt almost like he’s flying. You know, down. ‘On the way home, we stopped at the pharmacy to buy the medication. Unfortunately, the mall was very busy. We were tiny fish swimming in a sea of people’. |
95 | L | We were tiny fish swimming in a sea of people. Compare, they [are] comparing him and his mommy, to tiny fish who are swimming in a sea of lots of people. |
96 | T | Yeah, so have you been to the shop when it’s really busy? And you just see crowds and crowds of people in front of you. |
97 | L | Yeah. |
98 | T | Okay. Also is ‘the mall was very busy’. Is that a metaphor? |
99 | L | Umm, no. |
100 | T | Why? |
101 | L | Because they’re not comparing the mall to anything. |
Only one teacher was available to participate in the study.
Zoom is an app that allows you to set up collaborative virtual video and audio conferencing, etc.
In this study, I did not include the analysis of Batseba’s lesson as her mother also interacted in the lesson. A parent’s presence would influence the findings.
A term taken from Jackson (