Cook-Sather, Alison (2006). Education is Translation: A Metaphor for Change in Learning and Teaching. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

The metaphors for teaching are many. In Education is Translation: A Metaphor for Change in Learning and Teaching, Alison Cook-Sather offers fresh insights into a subject long explored within the educational, psychological, and philosophical literature. Drawing upon a novel combination of social science theories as well as translation studies, the author weaves together her own personal story of learning German with three case studies of education as translation. Together, these elements yield fresh insights into the educational experience.

The author’s central argument is that the metaphor of translation encourages us to consider education in terms of continual and evolving change. Education is not about a fixed set of connections between ideas and individuals, she notes, but about promoting new relationships mediated by the process of learning and the learner. The effects of this process are highly personal, distinctive, and ongoing. She begins the book by introducing her own story of "living translation" as she studies German. She then spends a second chapter analyzing the metaphor of education as translation from both historical and philosophical perspectives and comparing it to alternative metaphors. An Appendix supplements this discussion with additional examples of other widely-used metaphors for education.

The next three chapters provide case studies of education as translation drawn from more formal and conventional contexts: college sophomores enrolled in a reading and writing course, a professional development workshop on learning with new media, and a teacher preparation program. One of the book’s central themes has to do with the complexities, even the impossibilities, of translation, which is distinguished from transliteration or the word-for-word re-rendering of statements in one language into another. In each chapter, Cook-Sather makes clear the highly personal nature of education, what may be gained or lost in translation, the necessary struggles, and always open-ended quality of these experiences.

In the last chapter, Cook-Sather takes a second look at the features of collaboration, reflection, and transformation central to the three case studies, wrapping up by returning to her own story of learning German. She emphasizes here that the representation of education as metaphor suggests the liminal space in which the student is both the "thing translated" and "the translator," concluding that "This desire to change is at the root of metaphor, of translation, and of education" (p. 149).

This book provides an intriguing and reflective analysis of its subject at a time when many individuals seem to have confused learning of the most narrow, technical, and superficial sort with true education.

Pages: 208     Price: $49.95     ISBN: 978-0-8122-3889-1

Reviewed by Margaret Smith Crocco, Teachers College, Columbia University