METAPHOR AND ANALOGYIN SCIENCE EDUCATION Science & Technology Education Library VOLUME 30 SERIES EDITOR William W. Cobern, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, USA FOUNDING EDITOR Ken Tobin, City University of New York, N.Y., USA EDITORIALBOARD Henry Brown-Acquay, University College of Education of Winneba, Ghana Mariona Espinet, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain Gurol Irzik, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey Olugbemiro Jegede, The Open University, Hong Kong Lilia Reyes Herrera,Universidad Autónoma de Colombia, Bogota, Colombia Marrisa Rollnick, College of Science, Johannesburg, South Africa Svein Sjøberg,University of Oslo, Norway Hsiao-lin Tuan,National Changhua University of Education, Taiwan SCOPE The book series Science & Technology Education Libraryprovides a publication forum for scholarship in science and technology education. It aims to publish innovative books which are at the forefront of the field. Monographs as well as collections of papers will be published. The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume. Metaphor and Analogy in Science Education Edited by PETER J. AUBUSSON University of Technology Sydney, Australia ALLAN G. HARRISON Central Queensland University, Australia and STEPHEN M. RITCHIE Queensland University of Technology, Australia AC.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN-10 1-4020-3829-1 (HB) ISBN-13 978-1-4020-3829-7 (HB) ISBN-10 1-4020-3830-5 (e-book) ISBN-13 978-1-4020-3830-3 (e-book) Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AADordrecht, The Netherlands. www.springeronline.com Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2006 Springer No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed in the Netherlands. FOREWORD 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. Among these strategies was the use of familiar metaphors and analogies to assist learning of science concepts. It was found that science teachers seemed to use these less often than might have been expected, and when they did, that students could be left with conceptions that had not been adequately differentiated between the base analog and the target science concepts. So began more than a decade of quite intensive research on the use of analogies, metaphors and, in due course, models in the teaching and learning of science. This book contains much of what has been learnt through this research. Its chapters provide an excellent introduction to how this strategy for teaching/learning science has been explored, what has been established, and the pros and cons of its use. An important outcome from this research is that it began an interest in the discourse in science classrooms. As significant and purposive examples of research into the discourse between teachers and their students, the studies described in the book can themselves serve as models and warnings for the much more complex issue of studying the discourse in science classrooms more totally. vi FOREWORD The editors and chapter authors are to be congratulated and thanked by those of us who have known, but not really known, that these studies were occurring. It will be of considerable use to graduate students and others who may be challenged to extend its studies still further. Peter Fensham, Emeritus Professor Monash University, Australia/Adjunct Professor Queensland University of Technology, Australia TABLE OF CONTENTS PETER J. AUBUSSON, ALLAN G. HARRISON AND STEPHEN M. RITCHIE / Metaphor and Analogy: Serious thought in science education 1 ALLAN G. HARRISON AND DAVID F. TREAGUST / Teaching and Learning with Analogies: Friend or foe? 11 JOHN WILLIAM WILLISON AND PETER CHARLES TAYLOR / Complementary Epistemologies of Science Teaching: Towards an integral perspective 25 JENS WILBERS AND REINDERS DUIT / Post-Festum and Heuristic Analogies 37 ALLAN G. HARRISON / The Affective Dimension of Analogy 51 RICHARD K. COLL / The Role of Models, Mental Models and Analogies in Chemistry Teaching 65 GRADY J. VENVILLE, SUSAN J. GRIBBLE AND JENNIFER DONOVAN / Metaphors for Genes 79 PETER J. AUBUSSON AND STEPHEN FOGWILL / Role Play as Analogical Modelling in Science 93 GREGORY P. THOMAS / Metaphor, Students’ Conceptions of Learning and Teaching, and Metacogniton 105 ROSÁRIA JUSTI AND JOHN GILBERT / The Role of Analog Models in the Understanding of the Nature of Models in Chemistry 119 TOM RUSSELL AND MICHAEL HRYCENKO / The Role of Metaphor in a New Science Teachers’ Learning from Experience 131 STEPHEN M. RITCHIE, ALBERTO BELLOCCHI, HEIDI POLTL AND MARIANNE WEARMOUTH / Metaphors and Analogies in Transition: Beginning teachers’ lived experience 143 KENNETH TOBIN / Why do Science Teachers Teach the Way They Do and How Can They Improve Practice? 155 PETER AUBUSSON / Can Analogy Help in Science Education Research? 165 STEPHEN M. RITCHIE / Metaphors We Write By 177 STEPHEN M. RITCHIE, PETER J. AUBUSSON AND ALLAN G. HARRISON / Metaphorically Thinking 189 Contributors 197 Index 203 PETER J. AUBUSSON, ALLAN G. HARRISON AND STEPHEN M. RITCHIE METAPHOR AND ANALOGY Serious thought in science education 1. FROM PARIAH TO PANACEA? To draw attention to a philosopher’s metaphors is to belittle him – like praising a logician for his beautiful handwriting. Addiction to metaphor is held to be illicit, on the principle that whereof one can speak only metaphorically, thereof one ought not to speak at all. …do not accept the commandment, “Thou shalt not commit metaphor” or assume that metaphor is incompatible with serious thought. (Black, 1962, p.25) How far we have come! Since the mid-twentieth century, philosophers have accepted that metaphor and analogy permeate all discourse, are fundamental to human thought and provide a basis for mental leaps (see Black, 1962; Goswami, 1992; Johnson, 1981; Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Schön, 1983). Similarly, the potential contribution of metaphor and analogy to cognitive learning (e.g., in schools) has attracted the attention of the science education research community (Gentner & Stevens, 1983). The first important revelation is that metaphor is not merely a linguistic phenomenon. It also is a fundamental principle of thought and action (see Johnson, 1981). The second revelation is that analogies are more specific than metaphors and, despite their wide use in everyday communication and reasoning, their use in teaching is often problematic because the applicability of specific analogies is not negotiated w ith students. Consequently, researche rs have been and are interested in the form and function of analogy and metaphor in learning and teaching science. These philosophical and educational origins of metaphor and analogy have spawned a significant literature and cognitive theories. These have the potential to enhance science teaching and learning; promote higher-level thinking; and yield new tools for interpreting science education research. To achieve these aims, the book brings together powerful ideas and new developments from international scholars of metaphor and analogy in science education. It also offers theoretical and practical perspectives on metaphor and analogy that should promote concept learning, metacognition and communication. The book’s first theme is the ubiquity of metaphor and how metaphors can help people explore their epistemological and ontological commitments. Metaphoric 1 P. J. Aubusson et al. (eds.), Metaphor and Analogy in Science Education, 1-9. . © 2006Springer. Printed in the Netherlands. 2 PETER J. AUBUSSON, ALLAN G. HARRISON AND STEPHEN M. RITCHIE thinking helps teachers (re)conceptualise their role and practice and it can promote professional reflection, action research and educational renewal. These benefits are intrinsically tied to “the metaphors we live by” because metaphor enables us to “conceptualise our experiences” and to pick “out what is ‘important’ in the experience” and “categorise the experience … dimension by dimension” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p.83, 145). Metaphors have ‘entailments’ that suggest a range of new ideas, applications and possibilities; this is what makes metaphor a creative tool for looking inwards and for critiquing accepted ideas. The second theme is analogical thinking as it applies to concept description and explanation and the book explores the theory and use of analogies in classrooms and discusses a range of popular instructional analogies. Analogy is attractive because it is a simple way to explain abstract ideas in familiar terms. Analogy can be capricious, however, because its benefits can be compromised by unforeseen limitations and because it is often used in unplanned, uncritical ways. Several chapters discuss best practice with respect to analogy and metaphor use for concept teaching and learning and how to better use analogies and metaphors to view, interpret and communicate ideas in and about school science. A third theme interrogates the ways that metaphor and analogy, and the way we think and write metaphorically, can enhance educational research. This is a methodological issue and is advocated by Miles and Huberman (1984). We believe that this is an emerging and exciting research direction. Knowledge in this field has the potential to reshape science teacher education, teacher professional development, curriculum and science education research. Throughout the book, contributors highlight successful applications of analogies and metaphors in teaching, learning and research, and foreshadow exciting developments and pitfalls to be avoided. Contributors include science teachers and teacher candidates who have used metaphor and analogy extensively in their classroom practice or as a tool to reflect on their practice, as well as researchers who have investigated analogy and metaphor in science education over a number of decades. 2. WHAT ARE METAPHORS AND ANALOGIES? The terms metaphor and analogy are used in a variety of ways in the science education literature, sometimes interchangeably. Analogy can be distinguished from metaphor in the sense that in metaphor, A is said to be B but in analogy, A is like B. According to this view, when we use the metaphor student as tabula rasa, it suggests that the student has no prior science knowledge before entering a science classroom. The student is like a sponge, however, is an analogy suggesting that there are characteristics which the student and a sponge have in common but implying there are ways in which they differ. Another distinction between analogy and metaphor in science education has been that the term metaphor is often assocated with views of teaching (e.g., the teacher as captain of the ship) whereas analogy is more often associated with explanation of science content (e.g., human body as