In this paper, a self-created analogy is presented based on comparing the process of osmosis with a situation recreated in a train carriage. It was implemented with upper-secondary education students at a secondary school in Chiclana de la Frontera (Cádiz, Spain). To assess the progression of the students' models on osmosis, their activities…

Energy is a concept frequently encountered both in daily life and in various disciplines. Despite such a wide range of scope, conceptualizing it might be challenging at times. This study aims to investigate high school students' views on the concept of energy through a set of various paper-and-pencil tests. For this purpose, 654 high school…

Metaphor generation is both a creative act and a means of learning. When learning a new concept, people often create a metaphor to connect the new concept to existing knowledge. Does the manner in which people generate a metaphor, via sudden insight (Aha! moment) or deliberate analysis, influence the quality of generation and subsequent learning…

The role of science teachers in the formation of students' approaches to chemistry subjects is very important. Metaphors can be used as a data collection tool to determine what meanings science teachers, who are preparing to step into the teaching profession, attribute to some concepts. It is important to know how chemistry is perceived by science…

The study aims to learn that they want to reflect on their reflective thoughts and reveal how they reflect what they have learned. Reflective thinking, one of the higher-order thinking skills, enables students to learn more easily and permanently. Students with high reflective thinking skills will be more successful both in their academic and…

Teaching with analogies is an important pedagogy that helps learners construct abstract conceptions through reasoning with something familiar. Heat concepts were chosen for this study because they have an intangible nature and involve complex mechanisms that often challenge school-aged learners. Learning this kind of complex concept with analogies…

The aim of this study is to explore how tertiary science students' use of metaphors in their popular science article writing may influence their understanding of subject matter. For this purpose, six popular articles written by students in physics or geology were analysed by means of a close textual analysis and a metaphor analysis. In addition,…

This research was performed to determine the Common Metaphorical Perceptions of Prospective Teachers on DNA-Gene-Chromosome Concepts, despite classroom levels and university differences. For the baseline group studies, two State Universities, one from the east and the other from the north of Turkey, were selected to be studied in the Fall Semester…

Chemistry as a discipline in general incorporates abstract concepts, which should be visualized through experiment- and application-oriented methods. It is a well-known fact in Turkey that chemistry class offered by simple and traditional methods cannot be understood by students at a satisfactory level. Such chemical subjects as atoms, molecules,…

Abstract concepts dominate university science teaching, and much of this content is taught without sufficient connection to students' prior knowledge or everyday experiences. As this can be problematic for students, the aim of this research was to determine the utility and effectiveness of a professional development module on using analogies to…

Many geoscience phenomena cannot be perceived at human temporal or spatial scales. As a consequence, we can only understand many processes that drive geological phenomena through analogical reasoning. Building deep conceptual understanding requires instruction that activates the appropriate source analogs and allows students to build useful…

Thermal science is a perennial obstacle for learners. Infrared camera technology provides an opportunity for pupils to confront challenging thermal ideas. From an embodied cognition perspective, sensory experiences form metaphoric relations that underpin conceptualisation and reasoning about abstract scientific phenomena. This study investigated…

This study aims to reveal the trends and foundations in research on students' conceptual understanding in science education. The literature was selected from three recognized journals in science education. The Structural Topic Model (STM) method was used to categorize articles into ten topics considering information about the semantic cohesion and…

According to general relativity (GR), we live in a four-dimensional curved universe. Since the human mind cannot visualize those four dimensions, a popular analogy compares the universe to a two-dimensional rubber sheet distorted by massive objects. This analogy is often used when teaching GR to upper secondary and undergraduate physics students.…

The main focus of this study is to determine pre-service science teachers' cognitive structure about trichome and stoma through two alternative assessment techniques: metaphor and word association test. The study was conducted with 35 pre-service science teachers. Word association test given stoma and trichome as stimulant words was applied. Also…