The recognition of the importance and the role of metaphorical use of language for thoughts and thinking opened up new areas of investigation in Education as well as in Psychology, Social Sciences and all the wider fields of Human Sciences. The immediacy of understanding metaphors implies a crucial attention in using it; «a good metaphor sometimes impresses, strikes, or seizes its producer: We want to say we had a ‘flash of insight,’ not merely that we were comparing A with B, or even that we were thinking of A as if it were B» (Black, 1993, p. 31). M. Taras (2007) recognises an important role of metaphors in our thinking and beliefs. «Metaphors (along with analogies, models and exemplars [Petrie & Oshlag, 2002, p. 584]) not only represent how we think and build up our concepts and knowledge frames (Reddy, 1979; Fairclough, 1994; Mercer, 2000; Lakoff & Johnson, 2002; Ortony, 2002), but also that metaphors are an important means of creating a bridge from old concepts and knowledge to new ones» (Taras, 2007: 56). As result, the tension between the literal meaning of metaphors and its ability to focus the discussion on aspects that the producer wants to highlight become a focus of interest for researchers. The comprehension of metaphors as well as the understanding of language in general is immediate. We cannot escape from it. When the literal meaning of metaphor is available, minds “process” it (Glucksberg, 2008). As result, the producer must to pay attention to the literal meaning of his/her metaphor. A. Ortony (1993) identifies two different approaches to conceptualise the use of metaphors. The first one comes from the idea that cognition is the result of mental construction (p. 1). Understanding the reality needs to go beyond literal information given; social interactions, the context, and knower’s pre-existing knowledge influence the perception and the comprehension (Ibidem). Then, although the language can be immediately perceived, it is not directly understood as it is socially constructed. Anthropology, Sociology, Linguistics, Cgnitive psychology, and Philosofy of science (Kant, 1963; Greimas, 1970; Lévi-Strauss, 1963; Sperber, 1975) have actively rejected this perspective affirming that metaphors are unimportant and deviant because their explanation is considered a violation of linguistic rules (Ibidem).

The present study embraces the consideration of metaphors as useful tools to understand concepts and let the reader to exemplify issues related on particular aspects. Moreover, what it must be take into account is that if on one hand metaphors can consider only few aspects of the whole concept on which they refer (so the aspects included in the literal meaning of the metaphor); on the other hand that aspects cannot be avoid in the explanation of the concept. This issue will be better explained in Par. 2 when there will described the metaphor adopted for the present research project.

Recently, artistic metaphors had helped in the construction of knowledge in order to approach different point of views of phenomena. This interest has involved not only social research in general, but only educational research. V. Janesick (2004) used the metaphors of dance and choreography to explore and describe qualitative research. F. Oser and F.J. Baeriswyl (2001) described the relationship between teaching-learning activities and students’ learning processes as an “educational choreography” to represent learning. 

The aim of this contribution is to explore the use of "choreofraphy" in Education as a metaphor.

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