Chiu and Lin (2005)

This Chinese study investigated how analogies influence learning about electric circuits in 10-year-old students, reporting that careful use of them can produce profound learning and help students overcome some of their misconceptions.

Evidence-based suggestions

  • Even the youngest students can benefit from multiple analogies and hands-on activities to develop and express their understanding of series and parallel circuits.

Learners’ ideas

  • Students may think that current moves from one end of a battery only to power a lightbulb.
  • Some students may think that current travels in different directions from the two terminals of a battery and meets in the components (a ‘clashing current model’).
  • Many students picture the current as decreasing around a circuit.
  • One student believed that individual components (e.g., bulbs) hold their own supply of ‘electricity’.
  • Because of the students’ assumption that electricity is reduced while passing through an electrical wire, the analogies could not modify their presuppositions without more specific contexts causing conflict.

Further suggestions

  • Curriculum developers may wish to include well-planned analogies for complicated concepts.
  • Using more than one analogy can be beneficial as it can provide a different perspective on unfamiliar or new concepts.
  • Teachers should acknowledge analogies' limitations to enhance students' scientific comprehension and prevent the overuse of multiple analogies.

Study Structure

Aims

  1. Investigate how different analogical materials influence students’ learning of electricity.
  2. Learn about how students’ mental models changed via the instructional processes.
  3. Examine the language young students used in acquiring the concept of electricity.

Evidence collection

Data was obtained through pre- and post-teaching questionnaires. The pre-test had six items covering circuit connection, two-bulb circuit design, serial connections, comparisons of bulbs, and students' initial thoughts on electricity before analogical instruction.

Students were then placed in one of four groups while studying simple circuits: a single analogy group, two similar analogies group, two complementary analogies group and a non-analogy group.

After completion of their studies, the students were tested again, using a different questionnaire. One-to-one interviews were also carried out with 32 students.

Comparisons of scores for the pre- and post-study questionnaires were made using SPSS.

Details of the sample

The sample consisted of 107 students, approximately 10 years old.

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