Getting the goods: an analysis of implications of the ‘education as delivery’ metaphor for the AI age

Education is frequently described through the use of the metaphor of ‘delivery’. This occurs in policy documents, in curriculum and in school-level materials. As a figure of speech, this metaphor has become naturalised in education discourse. This article shares internationally relevant findings from a small Australian study that uses qualitative textual analysis to trouble the use of this metaphor, especially in describing the work that systems and teachers do in the context of global teacher shortages and the rise of generative AI. It asks what the impacts of using this metaphor might be and offers findings to inform the conscious and reflexive formulation of language in policy and practice. Methodologically, the article blends feminist, literary and critical discourse analysis, by putting the ‘education as delivery’ metaphor into interdisciplinary conversation with philosopher Susan Sontag’s intimate analysis of metaphor around illness. This provides novel insights into the complex and paradoxical implications of the ‘delivery’ metaphor that expose ways teachers’ work is both elevated and denigrated in discourse, even as policymakers use this language to attempt to raise the status of teaching.