A metaphorical analysis on what it means to be language teachers: Vietnamese EFL graduate students’ reflection on, in, and for action

Metaphor-based reflection occupies an indispensable position in conceptualizing and advancing teachers' professional roles. Building upon this foundation, this study explored how Vietnamese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) graduate students used metaphors to articulate their professional selves and reflections for continuing development. Grounded in Schön's (1987) reflection cycle, it examined metaphorical representations across reflection on, in, and for action. Adopting a pholyphonic-narrative inquiry, six participants completed written-visual metaphor tasks, triangulated with their reflective journals and course portfolios. Content analysis identified four categories of personal metaphors comprising the behaviorist-transmissive, cognitivist-constructivist, social learning, and self-referential representations. Reflection-on-action metaphors provided retrospective insights into earlier professional selves, highlighting classroom authority and socially responsible work. Reflection-in-action metaphors captured the introspective and adaptive cognition during teaching, emphasizing learner-centered guidance. Reflection-for-action metaphors, oriented toward prospective selves, revealed personal actions for lifelong learning. The findings further reaffirmed the importance of integrating metaphor-based reflection in teacher education and offered the implications for nurturing language teachers with “morality”.