New Perspectives in Science Education

Extensive research on science education has evidenced the effectiveness of analogies as a didactic device that, as argued in this conference paper, can facilitate the learning process of abstract concepts when the analogies are appropriately and effectively used [1, 2]. The paper summarises research on such a use of analogies but also switches attention to student self-generated analogies, as opposed to analogies generated by education researchers, teachers, or science text-book authors that the literature has largely focused on. It discusses the heuristic use and efficacy of student self-generated analogies as a tool in approaching and correctly understanding what is new and unknown. Such use of analogies derives from research [3, 4] with a wide age range of students, who, when asked to make predictions in situations never considered before and to then provide explanations about these predictions, self-generated analogies. As it was found in their explanations, it was by reasoning on the basis of these self-generated analogies that they approached the situations they were presented with and made a scientifically compatible prediction for. This heuristic use of student self-generated analogies can be used in revealing a scientifically compatible way of reasoning on the basis of student self-generated analogies which can be also productively used in the process of science teaching.