Scaffolding the Understanding of Scientific Analogies

Analogy is a mainstay in STEM education. It benefits learning by highlighting important commonalities between concepts and promoting transfer of knowledge. However, students often fail to process analogies deeply, and thus miss the potential benefits. This research aims to equip students with a domain-general strategy for understanding analogies. We created an Analogy Template that guides students through an explicit analysis of the relational matches and object correspondences. To test its effects, we gave undergraduates a series of science analogies. The Training group used the template to analyze the analogies. The Control group explained the same analogies without the template. Then both groups were asked to explain four novel science analogies. Raters blind to condition judged the explanations. Students who successfully completed the template training showed better understanding of the analogies than those in the control group. These results provide initial evidence that analogical training can contribute to science understanding.