A study on analogies presented in high school physics textbooks

Nowadays, despite the improvements observed in technology and communication, textbooks retain their importance for students and teachers in classroom environments. Throughout the education process, science and technology textbooks are one of the most commonly used effective teaching materials. It is a well-known fact that students and teachers trust and are highly dependent on textbooks (Lumpe & Scharmann, 1991). Therefore, analysis in a variety of ways of the textbooks used by students and teachers will contribute to the literature on science education. One of the issues that should be analysed in science and technology textbooks is the way that analogies are configured by the author(s).

When educational analogies are used in texts, some of them may not be suitable for all learners. Therefore, teachers and authors of books need to have and develop an available and useful analogy repertoire (Shulman, 1986; Thiele & Treagust, 1994). At present, analogies are frequently found in science textbooks (Iding, 1997). It is especially difficult for learners to understand and explain most science concepts, which they are not able to test directly and observe clearly (Thiele & Treagust, 1995). Analogies help theoretical concepts of this kind to be stimulated in the mind and make them clear (Lawson, 1993).

Analogy is mostly used for understanding abstract concepts and complicated issues. An analogy is an explanation that compares a fact that is unknown and unfamiliar with another known and familiar one. The unknown fact is the target while the known fact is the analogue. The analogy compares the similar characteristics of the target and analogue and then a transition from the known information area to the unknown information area is made (Duit, 1991; Harrison & Treagust, 1994). The analogue is known information while the target is a less known or unknown information. An analogy is an application of features in the analogue to the target concept (Figure 1). The more closely the analogue matches the target, the more effective and powerful the analogy is (Glynn, 1991; Harrison & Treagust, 1994).

Figure 1. The relationship between analogue and target domains in an analogy (Glynn, 1991).

Analogies are effective teaching tools, helping the students convey new information to the available information structure, providing meaninful learning motivation and giving a new point of view on the subject (Glynn & Takahashi, 1998; Heywood, 2002). Analogies help to remove misconceptions and play an important role in conceptual exchange (Stavy, 1991; Venville & Treagust, 1996). Analogies make abstract concepts concrete (Thiele & Treagust, 1994). There are some disadvantages when they are not used well (Duit, 1991). Not all analogies are good analogies, and neither are all good analogies useful for all students (Orgill & Bodner, 2004). In an analogy, if the analogue and target concepts do not fully overlap with each other, they can lead students to form erroneous concepts and make mistakes (Clement, 1993; Geban et al., 1999; Duit et al., 2001). Analogies in textbooks are usually used randomly and are inadequate for students (Gilbert, 1989), which causes them to make mistakes (Thiele & Treagust, 1994). This teaching method makes complicated issues easier to understand with the help of analogy. While using analogy, it makes associations with real life, thus, it helps students visualize them by turning abstract concepts into more concrete ones. Analogies should therefore be chosen carefully and used in accordance with certain rules. Some teaching models aiming to use analogies effectively in science education have been developed.

Of these, the one which is used most is the Teaching with Analogies Model (TWA). The TWA model explains the rules that teachers need to follow during analogy-based teaching. These rules comprise the following six steps (Glynn, 1991):

Introduce the target concept
Cue retrieval of the analogue concept
Identify relevant features of the target and analogue
Map similarities
Indicate where the analogy breaks down
Draw conclusions

Analogies serve as initial models to promote scientific concepts and are used frequently in science textbooks (Iding, 1997). When they looked at the international science education literature, Curtis and Reigeluth (1984) found an average of 8.3 analogies for each science textbook in the United States. Thiele and Treagust (1994) expanded Curtis and Reigeluth’s (1984) classifying system and categorized analogies in high school chemistry textbooks in Australia in a systematic way and found a total of 93 analogies in 10 books. Thiele, Venville and Treagust (1995) compared high school chemistry and biology textbooks for their use of analogies and found that analogies were used more in biology textbooks. Newton (2003) compared elementary school science textbooks with high school science textbooks in terms of their use of analogies.

Where national science education literature is concerned, it is seen that more studies focus on analogies in biology textbooks (Dikmenli, 2010) than in science and technology (Dikmenli & Kıray, 2007) and chemistry (Şendur et al., 2011) textbooks. For example, Dikmenli (2010), analyzing the types of analogies used in high school biology textbooks in Turkey, scrutinised how these analogies are configured and presented. In this study, a total of 119 analogies were identified in seven biology textbooks. It was found that most of the analogies used in biology textbooks are configured and presented in the form of structural, verbal, concrete-abstract, embedded activator and simple analogies. In that study, it was revealed also that most of the analogies in the books are not configured according to the analogy-based teaching guides as analogies based on the teaching model are.

In the literature of science education, there has been no study so far about analogies used in physics textbooks in high schools in Turkey. In developing countries, due to a lack of technology and laboratory facilities and to teacher-centred teaching strategies, textbooks stand out even more. Physics textbooks are important and have a central role in the process of the teaching of science. For example, Chiappetta et al. (2006) report that more than 90% of high school science teachers trust textbooks. It is intended that the analysis of the analogies used in physics textbooks in Turkey will therefore benefit students, teachers, writers and programmers. The issues difficult to understand become simpler to acquire thanks to using analogies in physics textbooks. It is aimed to give information to other physics teachers about how and to what extent the analogies in this textbook which is taught in each state school and some private scholls are being used.