Analogies in Senior High School Chemistry Textbooks: A Critical Analysis.

Analogies are considered an effective method for providing a bridge between unfamiliar concepts and knowledge that students already have. This paper reports a critical analysis of analogies found in chemistry textbooks used by Australian senior high school students and is presented in three sections. The first section of the paper presents the definition of analogy and discusses different types of analogies, their use in teaching, and potential constraints to their effective use. The second section reports a two-part study of 10 chemistry textbooks. A content analysis: indicated that 93 analogies were found in the 10 textbooks; compared the frequency of analogy use for particular targeted content areas; identified textbook authors' incorporation of instructional strategies that aim to directly assist the student to use analogies to aid understanding; and examined the type of analogies used most frequently in the textbooks. Secondly, interviews were conducted with the authors of 7 of the 10 textbooks to solicit views held by the authors concerning: analogy use; reasons for inclusion or exclusion of analogies; and changes the author would make to a later edition of a textbook. Conclusions reported in the third section indicated that: (1) authors assumed classroom teachers would effectively use the analogies, despite no evidence that teachers have pedagogical content knowledge in this area; (2) the frequency of analogy inclusion implies an unwillingness by authors to use analogies in textbook situations; and (3) the authors are unfamiliar with research guides regarding analogy presentation results. A list of 21 references and an appendix of the textbook titles are provided. (MDH)