Using self‐generated analogies in teaching of thermodynamics

Abstract

Using self-generated analogies has been proposed as a method in a constructivist tradition for students to learn about a new subject, by use of what they previously know. We report on a group exercise on using self-generated analogies to make sense of two thermodynamic processes, reversible adiabatic expansion and free adiabatic expansion of an ideal gas. The participants (N = 8) were physics preservice teacher students at the fourth year of the teacher education program. A main finding was that work with self-generated analogies tended to be accompanied by the students assuming ownership for their learning, manifested in terms of actions of choice and control and the use of exploratory talk. Consequently, several self-generated analogies were elaborated and developed to a high order relational structure. However, we also found that with the use of selfgenerated analogies in science teaching follows the risks of developing idiosyncratic explanations of the encountered phenomena or getting stuck in overly complex comparisons.Sammanfattning: Självgenererade analogier har förts fram som en metod i en konstruktivistisk tradition för att elever och studenter ska kunna lära sig något nytt genom att relatera till vad de redan vet. Vi redogör här för en gruppövning där självgenererade analogier användes för att förstå två termodynamiska processer: reversibel adiabatisk expansion, respektive fri adiabatisk expansion av en ideal gas. Åtta (N = 8) lärarstudenter på fjärde året av utbildningen med inriktning mot fysik på gymnasiet deltog i studien. Ett viktigt resultat var att vid arbete med självgenererade analogier tenderade studenterna att ta ägandeskap för sitt lärande, vilket tog sig uttryck i handlingar såsom aktiva val, kontroll över processen och explorativ dialog. Som en följd utvecklades flera av de självgenererade analogierna till ett stort strukturellt djup. Samtidigt såg vi att vid skapande av egna analogier löper studenter risken att utveckla egna förklaringar av de studerade fenomenen som inte svarar mot dem inom vetenskapen eller snärja in sig i alltför komplexa jämförelser.

Dynamic testing and transfer: An examination of children's problem-solving strategies

“…Such a conclusion has important implications for both individual and larger scale educational dynamic-test situations and particular curricular areas (e.g. Grigorenko, 2009;Haglund & Jeppsson, 2012), for example math and spelling. Whether analogy construction tasks provide more valuable information to educationalists when these are domain specific or domain general, such as the task reported in the present study, is a question that requires further investigation.…”

“…Providing children with the opportunity to move beyond practice experiences to engagement in problem construction may not only shed light on children's abilities to transfer learning but also on individual differences in the developing use of problem-solving strategies (Haglund & Jeppsson, 2012;Kim, Bae, Nho, & Lee, 2011;Pittman, 1999;Siegler, 2006). Therefore, the problem construction task utilised in the current study was administered to assess the extent to which children's learning on the initial task subsequently transferred to one that involved a reversal of roles.…”

Learning specific content in technology education: learning study as a collaborative method in Swedish preschool class using hands-on material

“…One pupil, for example, associated size to stability because of previous experiences of sticks, and chose to use squares rather than triangles, because squares are bigger than triangles. Haglund and Jeppsson (2012) write that there is a risk that when pupils use self-generated analogies in science education, these analogies can mislead the pupils in their understanding, which is obviously the case in the example mentioned here. Another pupil in the first cycle of the learning study in the preschool class compared her construction to her experiences of a bridge she knew from home, focusing on how it looked and not how it was constructed to be stable.…”

Periyodik Sistem Konusu ve Analojilerle Öğretim Modeli: Yöntem, Cinsiyet ve Motivasyon Faktörlerinin Öğrenci Başarısına Etkisi

“…İyi planlanmış analojilerin öğrencilerin yaratıcılıklarının geliştirilmesinde de etkili olabilir (Kobak, 2013). Öğretim sürecinde öğrenci merkezli analojilerin kullanılmasının, öğretmen merkezli analojilere kıyasla, daha üst düzey öğrenme çıktılarına neden olduğu (Haglund & Jeppsson, 2012) alan yazında vurgulanmaktadır.…”