As Instructional Designers, we are translators. Our job is to transform a Subject Matter Expert’s dense, esoteric knowledge into something a learner can actually grasp. One of the most powerful tools in that translation kit is the metaphor. But like any powerful tool, it is dangerous.
A well-designed metaphor grants sudden, intuitive clarity; a poorly chosen one plants durable misconceptions that must be painfully unlearned later.
Too often, Instructional Designers reach for metaphors as a creative flourish rather than a cognitive instrument. To use them effectively, we must go beyond poetic charm and examine the mechanics of meaning, beginning with the work of French philosopher Paul Ricœur.
In The Rule of Metaphor, Ricœur argues that metaphors are not decorative substitutions but engines of meaning-making. A metaphor generates a 'semantic innovation': a new meaning born from the productive tension between what something is and what it is not.
That tension forces the mind to synthesise a new understanding. A metaphor, for Ricœur, is not merely linguistic—it is heuristic: a tool for discovery.
Ricœur doesn’t attempt to explain this process biologically; it simply wasn’t his project. But his account aligns remarkably well with what cognitive scientists later identified as core mechanisms of learning. To understand why Ricœur’s theory holds up in practice, we must leave the philosophy department and head down the hall to the psychology lab. Less fun for parties, but a great place to get some testing done.
Adults retain significant neural plasticity, but they also carry extensive prior knowledge and entrenched schemas. Consider how much easier it is to find a box in an empty attic as opposed to the attic stacked with decades of things that ‘might be useful some day’. You’re going to need some landmarks.
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As Malcolm Knowles observed, adults learn best by connecting new information to what they already know (Knowles, 1984). Metaphor leverages this principle—if designed well.
Here is how Ricœur’s philosophy maps onto three specific cognitive mechanisms that inform how we approach adult learning.
Ricœur argued that a metaphor sparks new meaning (‘semantic innovation’) by rubbing two ideas together. Cognitive science tells us exactly how this happens. Our knowledge is organised into 'schemas' (interconnected mental boxes).
When learners encounter a novel idea with no existing schema, a metaphor lets them borrow the architecture of a familiar one. They open the ‘wrong’ box on purpose, but just for long enough to scaffold the new idea into place.
It’s a clever mental hack: peek inside the box, copy what’s useful, then close it again, leaving the learner’s mind ready to grasp the unfamiliar.
Our working memory is painfully limited (Sweller, 1988), and abstract concepts? They’re the cognitive equivalent of lifting a grand piano with your pinky finger. Maybe that’s why humans are hopelessly metaphorical: we simply can’t think about the abstract without leaning on the concrete (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Hence, the judge sitting high on a fancy chair isn’t just drama—it’s your brain’s way of understanding authority.
Metaphors are like mental scaffolding. They take a concept that’s tricky, lean it against something familiar, and suddenly your working memory can focus on the interesting bits instead of just staying upright.
Just keep in mind that metaphors don’t remove the load; they redistribute it. A good metaphor trims the unnecessary baggage (extraneous load) and boosts the productive kind (germane load). A bad metaphor? That’s like carrying suitcases full of rocks while trying to climb the stairs: all effort, no progress.
Ricœur famously argued that metaphors let us ‘picture’ the abstract. He called it the ‘iconic’ moment of meaning. Decades later, Allan Paivio’s dual coding theory gave this idea a cognitive backbone: our brains have two processing channels, verbal (words) and non-verbal (images).
Not every metaphor paints a picture, but many do. Try this: can you hear 'the immune system is an army' without picturing tiny soldiers on patrol? That’s the magic. By firing up both channels at once, metaphors make meaning stick.
Even if the words slip from memory, the mental image often survives, letting learners reconstruct the concept. This is what gives metaphors their mnemonic power (Clark & Paivio, 1991).
A learning metaphor only works if the relationships in the familiar domain (the source) line up with those in the new concept (the target). This structural consistency of a good metaphor is also referred to as isomorphism.
Ricœur called this heuristic power: a good metaphor lets learners discover something new, see reality in a fresh way (Ricœur, 1975). But for that discovery to stick, the logic has to hold up. If the metaphor contradicts the actual concept, it’s not enlightening; it’s misleading.
Research on analogy confirms this. Learners don’t just map superficial similarities; they map relationships, often with surprising depth (Gentner, 1983). The relational structure of the source must therefore reliably mirror the relational structure of the target.
If the structure doesn't match, the discovery will be false, and your metaphor moves from being a tool to being a trap.
Let’s attempt to teach a non-technical audience what an Application Programming Interface (API) is. This is abstract code. If we show them a diagram of JSON requests, the learner’s eyes will glaze over and they’ll start thinking about dinner plans.
Instead, we use the waiter metaphor.
The graphic designer can now depict the API not as a black box or a cloud, but as a figure moving between two distinct zones. This metaphor is structurally sound, visually depictable, and scalable (e.g., you can extend it to authentication, errors, or rate limits).
Now, let us look at a metaphor that often fails, despite its popularity: teaching electrical voltage using the water pipe metaphor. At a basic level, it seems sound.
It helps a novice visualise the basics. However, for an instructional designer creating a deep-dive engineering course, this metaphor is a trap known as negative transfer—where prior knowledge interferes with new learning (Schunk, 2012).
The relational structure collapses at precisely the point where accurate mental models matter. Learners over-extend the metaphor and develop durable misconceptions about circuits, fields, and electron flow.
A metaphor is useful only if you can articulate—and teach—the point where it stops being useful.
Before you commit your metaphor to a storyboard or an animation script, subject it to both Ricœur’s philosophy and Sweller’s science.
Before committing to a metaphor, ask:
Adult learners will bring their own ‘attic’ full of prior beliefs about the concepts you are introducing. The last thing you want to do is reinforce those errant ideas. What pitfalls are there that you want to avoid?
Every metaphor breaks eventually. You must know where the edge of the map is so you can warn the learner. (e.g., 'Unlike a waiter, an API never gets tired.')
Can your metaphor stretch to cover more complex cases?A fragile metaphor works for a 101 module and then collapses under intermediate content, requiring learners to discard and re-learn structure. A scalable metaphor supports depth.
Never explain a mystery with a riddle. Calling blockchain a ‘digital ledger’ only helps if learners already understand ledgers. Otherwise, you’re adding cognitive load for no good reason. If your metaphor requires its own metaphor, throw it out.
Some metaphors take way too much work to understand if you are just starting out with a topic. In these cases, leverage a simpler metaphor first (even if it is more prone to ‘breaking’) and just warn the learner that it is an oversimplification to help them grasp the big picture. You can always replace it with a more precise metaphor when it’s more appropriate to do so. Just don’t introduce misconceptions!
Remember: Unlearning is harder than learning; design accordingly.
In e-learning, metaphors don’t stay linguistic; they become pictures and animations. While this makes the metaphor more powerful (and more fun), it also introduces risks.
Visual metaphors are often taken literally. Graphical detail can accidentally imply conceptual detail, so be careful about what you add in while creating graphics to visualise the metaphor. If the text version is too thin to create well-rounded graphics, maybe you can make some suggestions and discuss them with the Instructional Designer and/or the SME.
Refine the concept collaboratively until the visual version matches the text-version of the metaphor perfectly.
In conclusion, do not choose metaphors because they are cute or because the stock photography is readily available. Choose them because they are structurally sound. We are architects of understanding, not decorators of information.
