Ski lifts, bowling balls, pipe system or waterfall? Lower secondary students’ understanding of analogies for electric circuits.

Erik Mogstad,Berit Bungum

doi:10.5617/nordina.6882

Abstract

Electric circuits are challenging for students to understand, and a wide range of analogies are developed in order to support their learning. This article investigates how lower secondary students understand four analogies presented in teaching material for science for Norwegian schools. The analogies compare electric circuits to a ski lift, a water pipe system, a waterfall and moving bowling balls, respectively. Data in the study consist of group interviews with 12 students in lower secondary school, about how they understand the analogies. Results show that students are able to reason about continuity and the concept of current in circuits based on all the analogies, but that the concept of voltage remains a challenge. It seems from the results that analogies relating voltage to energy transfer as an effect of height difference in a gravitational field are constructive, despite the need for the more abstract concept of field. In addition, the results demonstrate that weaknesses in how the analogies are presented may cause major problems for students in building a fruitful understanding. This kind of weaknesses are prevalent in the teaching material studied.

Highlights

Analogies are widely used in science teaching in order to support students’ understanding of concepts and relationships
Interview data suggest that the ski lift as analogy communicates the shared relations between the ski lift and the target domain in ways that are comprehendible for the grade 10 students
In the interview with George and Mark, they describe it this way (I: interviewer): I: What do you think about this ski lift for explaining various properties of electricity? George: It explains the movement of current quite well I: How, do you reckon? George: Well, it follows the movement quite well in that the carriages go

Summary

Introduction

Analogies are widely used in science teaching in order to support students’ understanding of concepts and relationships. The purpose of an analogy is to compare new concepts and relationships to similar identities in a domain that is known to the learner (see Gilbert & Justi, 2016). Research on what kind of analogies that best support students’ understanding of electric circuits is still incomplete and fragmented. This article reports an interview study of how lower secondary students (age 14-15) understand four different analogies for electric circuits found in Norwegian teaching material for lower secondary school science. Structure mapping means to investigate how concepts and relationships in a target domain (the new domain to be learnt) compare to the corresponding concepts and relationships in the known source domain used in the analogy. Results showed that all the analogies had a functional relationship between the source and target domain, but that the presentation lacks information about limitations and some lack sufficient explanation of the source domain

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion