Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 10, Issue 1, Article 3 (June, 2009) Carl-Johan RUNDGREN & Richard HIRSCH & Lena A. E. TIBELL Death of metaphors in life science? - A study of upper secondary and tertiary students’ use of metaphors in their meaning-making of scientific content Contents Next

Death of metaphors in life science?
- A study of upper secondary and tertiary students’ use of metaphors in their meaning-making of scientific content

 

Carl-Johan RUNDGREN¹, Richard HIRSCH² and Lena A. E. TIBELL³

¹Swedish National Graduate School in Science and Technology Education Research,
Department of Social and Welfare Studies, Linköping University,
601 74 Norrköping, SWEDEN

Email: carru@isv.liu.se

²Department of Culture and Communication, Linköping University,
581 83 Linköping, SWEDEN

Email: richard.hirsch@liu.se

³ Visual Learning and Communication, Department of Science and Technology, ITN,
Linköping University, 601 74 Norrköping, SWEDEN

Email: lena.tibell@itn.liu.se

Received 15 Jan., 2009
Revised 15 Jun., 2009

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Contents

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Metaphor and meaning-making
• Living and dead metaphors
• Depth of intention, precision, vagueness, specificity, and generality
  • Depth of intention
  • Precision, vagueness, specificity, and generality
• Metaphors and knowledge
• The Empirical Study
• Method
  • The context and sample
  • The scientific content of the visualizations used in the study
• Data collection
• Data analysis
• Results
• Discussion
• From novice to expert – ‘killing the metaphors’?
• Acknowledgements
• References

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Abstract

The study reported in this article investigated the use of metaphors by upper secondary and tertiary students while learning a specific content area in molecular life science, protein function. Terms and expressions in science can be used in such precise and general senses that they are totally dissociated from their metaphoric origins. Beginners in a scientific field, however, lack the experience of using a term of metaphorical origin in its domain-specific precise and general sense, and may therefore be more cognitively affected than the expert by the underlying metaphor. The study shows that beginners in the field of molecular life science use spontaneous metaphors and metaphors used in teaching in a way that demonstrates that they have difficulty using the proper scientific terminology. The results of this study indicate, among other things, that difficulties in science education may, to a large degree, be connected with problems of communicating the generality and precision of scientific terms and metaphors used in science. The article ends with a suggestion as how to enable students to move from general and vague metaphoric uses of scientific terms toward a more general and precise usage.

Keywords: Metaphors, Molecular life science, Communication