When talking about teaching and learning, we use many metaphors to describe abstract proc-esses. The aim of this research project is to determine metaphors, which are used by biology teachers to explain teaching and learning. These metaphorical principles may correlate with the conceptions about learning and the way of teaching. Interviews with biology teachers reveal their metaphorical principles about teaching and learning processes, and video observations are used for evaluating if their teaching style is constructivistic or instructive. We assume that teachers with an instructive way of teaching use other metaphorical principles than those who prefer to teach a class in a constructivist approach. Tobin (1990) suggests as well that a change in princi-ples of teaching and learning can be implemented by conceptualizing teachers’ roles through the metaphors they use and then introducing other more appropriate ones. So metaphors can help to understand the construction of teachers’ beliefs about the teaching and learning process (Marchant 1992). The theoretical basis of this investigation consists of Moderate Constructivism (Reinmann & Mandl 2006) and Experiential Realism (Gropengießer 2007), including the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1980). As criteria for analyzing biology lessons, the following crite-ria of constructivistic learning environments were used: active, constructive, collaborative, self-directed, contextualized, and emotional. Systematic Metaphor Analysis (Schmitt 2003) and Qualitative Content Analysis (Mayring 2002) were used to examine the interviews. The results are metaphorical principles of teaching and learning that are classified by criteria of constructivistic learning environments. In a question-naire, students of biology education were asked to interpret the identified principles by using the criteria of constructivistic learning environments. For analyzing the videotaped lessons, the same constructivistic criteria provide a basis for evaluating the biology teachers’ teaching style. One example of metaphorical principle is the description of the teaching and learning process as a journey from a start to a goal. The interviewed teachers used different alternatives of this principle when they were asked to describe their individual role as biology teachers. For example, the teacher as a mountain tour guide, which is a rather constructivistic picture of a teacher, or as a ship that carries the students over the sea, which reveals rather instructive conceptions about teaching and learning. Most of the biology education students who answered the questionnaire interpretate the “source-path-goal” scheme in a constructivistic view by describing the teacher as a companion who helps students on their way without giving too many guidelines.

The different views of metaphorical principles seem to cause different teaching styles. Teachers who use constructivistic metaphorical principles of teaching and learning create more constructivistic learning environments than teachers who use instructive principles. These results lead to the assumption that there is a tight connection between metaphorical principles and behaviour in class. Therefore metaphors can be helpful tools in biology teacher edu-cation to change conceptions of teaching and learning to a more constructivistic view.