Using analogies to improve elementary school students' inferential reasoning about scientific concepts

School Science and Mathematics, Mar 2001 by Yanowitz, Karen L

The finding that elementary school students can benefit from learning with instructional analogies has important implications for selecting and writing textbooks. As described earlier, many of the analogical reasoning studies with elementary school children have used a combination of text with additional support and explanation from lecture, visual aids, and training programs (Alexander et al., 1989; Bean, Searles, Cowan, & Singer, 1990; Flick, 1991; Friedel et al., 1990; Gobert & Clement, 1994, Harrison & Treagust, 1993; Mason, 1994; Mason & Sorzio, 1996). The results of the present studies revealed that even without any additional support, elementary school students benefitted from a purely text-based approach. Textbooks are an integral part of the science curriculum for many teachers and, in fact, often influence how teachers approach different content areas (Alexander & Kulikowich, 1994; Sorrells & Britton, 1998; Yore, 1991).

Teachers should look for elaborated instructional analogies when selecting textbooks that contain analogies (or when writing supplemental analogical materials for students). Elaborate analogies explicitly delineate the common relations between the source and target domains. For instance, the analogies in the present studies clearly specified that mitochondria are like power plants, because mitochondria send energy to the body to make the parts of the body work, and a power plant sends energy to a house to make the appliances work. Glynn et al.'s (Glynn, 1997; Glynn, Britton, Semrud-Clikeman, & Muth, 1989; Glynn & Takahashi, 1998) Teaching-With-Analogy guidelines suggested that using analogies effectively includes introducing the target and source concepts, identifying relevant features, and mapping similarities between the source and target.

Unfortunately, many textbooks written for elementary school students use few analogies when explaining unfamiliar concepts, and those texts using analogies may not provide many elaborated analogies. Analogies have not traditionally been used in elementary school texts, perhaps because educators as well as psychologists have assumed that children would not be able to comprehend them (Bacharach, 1988; Glynn et al., 1989; Goswami, 1991). Glynn et al. speculated that elementary school textbooks do not use elaborate analogies because the knowledge base of elementary school children is limited. Certainly that is true, but as the present studies illustrated, short elaborated analogies using familiar source domains can be constructed for elementary school students. Elementary school teachers who wish to select texts containing analogies should look for elaborated analogies or perhaps supplement the analogies given in the text with a more detailed description of the commonalities between the domains. Although this process might take some additional time on the part of classroom teachers, it may well be worth the effort if the presence of analogies deepens students' understanding of unfamiliar science concepts.