Abstract
Previous studies have demonstrated that analogies can promote student learning in physics and can be productively taught to students to support their learning, under certain conditions. We build on these studies to explore the use of analogy by students in a large introductory college physics course. In the first large-scale study of its kind, we demonstrate that different analogies can lead to varied student reasoning. When different analogies were used to teach electromagnetic (EM) waves, we found that students explicitly mapped characteristics either of waves on strings or sound waves to EM waves, depending upon which analogy students were taught. We extend these results by investigating how students use analogies. Our findings suggest that representational format plays a key role in the use of analogy.
Highlights
INTRODUCTIONA prevailing view is that an analogy can be treated as a mapping from a base domaine.g., the solar systemto a target domaine.g., the atom.[7,8,9,10] Applying this framework, experimentalists have asked specific research questions about the use of analogy in teaching physics
We found evidence that analogies generate inferences when taught in a large-scale introductory physics course
We find that representations play a key role as a mechanism of analogy use
Summary
A prevailing view is that an analogy can be treated as a mapping from a base domaine.g., the solar systemto a target domaine.g., the atom.[7,8,9,10] Applying this framework, experimentalists have asked specific research questions about the use of analogy in teaching physics. Rather than focus on students’ ability to use an analogy, abstract transfer theories tend to rate an analogy’s effectiveness based on the robustness of the analogy, the structure of which has been defined a priori.[17] In other words, analogies are framed from the expert physicist’s point of view, not the student’s While these models are useful for framing our understanding of analogies, they fall short of explaining how analogies are used by students, or how to use analogies productively for teaching. Part II examined mechanisms behind the use of analogy, focusing on representations
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