| This research explores Indonesian EFL teacher’s cognition through metaphor analysis. Utilising Conceptual Metaphors Theory from Lakoff and Johnson and teacher’s cognition theory from Simon Borg. This research aims at revealing Indonesian EFL teachers' thoughts, beliefs, and knowledge on teaching and learning. This research employs a qualitative approach, particularly a case study to gain deeper insight into Indonesian EFL teachers’ experiences, issues, and feelings inside classrooms. There are twelve participants in this research. A survey was distributed to these participants to gain insights from educational background and teaching experiences. By collecting metaphorical expressions from Indonesian EFL teachers from Elicited Metaphor Analysis (EMA) worksheet and letter writing, there are four conceptual metaphors emerged from 150 identified metaphor expressions produced by the participants. The findings reveal that the twelve participants express their learning process inspired by their prior learning experience including the words “voyage”, “climbing a steep hill”, “carrying heavy stones”, and “embarking on a great adventure”. Furthermore, factors such as professional coursework constructs Indonesian EFL teacher’s cognition as “Willy Wonka”, “lighthouse”, “painter”, and “potter” to express the roles inside the classroom. Other factors, such as classroom practice and contextual factors shape Indonesian EFL teachers’ cognition of practice teaching English, students’ perception and other teachers’ roles. The Indonesian EFL teachers' cognition of teaching English utilise the words “planting seeds”, “building bridge” and “a roller coaster”. Then, they consider students as elements of nature including “seeds”, “flower”, “plant”, “fruits” and “trees”. The last Indonesian EFL teachers' metaphors utilise the teacher's role that inspire from classroom practice as “gardener”, “navigator”, and “doctor”. In conclusion, the metaphorical expressions of the 12 Indonesian EFL teachers were effective instruments for revealing significant elements of their pedagogical cognition. In particular, these metaphors present how the instructors' thoughts are affected by four main things: what they learned during schooling periods, what they learned in professional courses, and what they practiced in the classrooms. The metaphors also gave a lot of information on each teacher's basic ideas, who they are as teachers, and how they feel about teaching and learning. These results show how useful metaphor analysis may be for teacher training programs and professional growth. Getting teachers to think about their own metaphors might help them become more aware of themselves and make their classrooms more reflective. |