Teaching school science within the cognitive and affective domains

Students’ reflective responses and feedbacks from the participating teachers, the results of these lesson trials, show a great potential in the use of “reversed analogies” to teach values and life skills to students.

The benefits that may be derived from using “reversed analogies” to surface values and life skills include the following:.

a) The optimal use of time to teach in the affective domain. The teacher completes the science lesson as usual and then continues with the reflective activities for students to surface values and skills. The reflective activities usually take only between five to ten minutes of class time;

b) Students get to identify the affective messages (the values or life skills) on their own by trying to see a parallel between these messages and the science concepts or skills they had just learnt. This can lead to ownership of learning and hence provide what one teacher termed as the “stickiness” of the affective message in their mind, especially when they need to associate that value or life skill later on in their lives;

c) Teachers are less likely to be burdened by a responsibility to teach values and soft skills explicitly. Explicit teaching of values may make teachers feel awkward, especially if students think of teachers as doing some form of “propaganda spreading”.

However, there are also limitations in using this strategy of “reversed analogies”. These include:

a) Not all science topics can be used as appropriate “reversed analogues”. Only some topics lend themselves well to explain or describe a value or life skill;

b) There is a real concern that some students may become confused by the use of the reversed analogies and these could lead to the development of misconceptions, or worse, wrong conceptions of science facts and skills.

While the benefits do outweigh the limitations, teachers who intend to employ similar “reversed analogy” strategies in teaching of science within the cognitive and affective domains may be reminded of the following:

a) They have to ensure that the science concepts or skills taught are correct, accurate and appropriate before using these as the “reversed analogues”;

b) They should frequently share and discuss their ideas and teaching plans with experienced teaching professionals and document their teaching experiences in personal professional teaching journals so that refinements and improvements to these “reversed analogies” could be made and used in future lessons.