Peter J. Aubusson & Allan G. Harrison 
Metaphor and Analogy in Science Education 

Years ago a primary teacher told me about a great series of lessons she had just had. The class had visited rock pools on the seashore, and when she asked them about their observations they talked about: it was like a factory, it was like a church, it was like a garden, it was like our kitchen at breakfast time, etc. Each student’s analogy could be elaborated, and these analogies provided her with strongly engaged students and a great platform from which to develop their learning about biological diversity and interdependence. In everyday life we learn so many things by comparing and contrasting. The use of analogies and metaphors is important in science itself and their use in teaching science seems a natural extension, but textbooks with their own sparse logic, do not help teachers or students. David Ausubel in the 1960s had advocated the use of ‘advance organisers’ to introduce the teaching of conceptual material in the sciences, and some of these had an analogical character. However, research on the value of this idea was cumbersome and indecisive, and it ceased after just a few studies. In the 1980s research into children’s conceptions of scientific phenomena and concepts really burgeoned, and it was soon followed by an exploration of a new set of pedagogical strategies that recognised a student in a science class is much more than a tabula rasa.

Table of Content

Metaphor and Analogy.- Teaching and Learning with Analogies.- Complementary Epistemologies of Science Teaching.- Post-Festum and Heuristic Analogies.- The Affective Dimension of Analogy.- The Role of Models, Mental Models and Analogies in Chemistry Teaching.- Metaphors for Genes.- Role Play as Analogical Modelling in Science.- Metaphor, Students’ Conceptions of Learning and Teaching, and Metacognition.- The Role of Analog Models in the Understanging of the Nature of Models in Chemistry.- The Role of Metaphor in a New Science Teacher’s Learning from Experience.- Metaphors and Analogies in Transition.- Why Do Science Teachers Teach the Way They Do and How Can They Improve Practice?.- Can Analogy Help in Science Education Research?.- Metaphors We Write by.- Metaphorically Thinking.