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ANALOGIES IN CHEMISTRY TEACHING AS A MEANS OF ATTAINMENT OF COGNITIVE AND AFFECTIVE OBJECTIVES: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY IN A NATURALISTIC SETTING, USING ANALOGIES WITH A STRONG SOCIAL CONTENT

Panagiotis Sarantopoulos, Georgios Tsaparlis

Chemistry Education: Research And Practice/RSC Publishing

2004

English

Research

School Directors, Researchers, Teachers, Policy Makers

Over 10 pages

This longitudinal study investigated the use of chemical analogies and their effect on cognitive and affective factors of tenth- and eleventh-grade Greek students. The participants were 148 students, (61 males and 87 females), attending year 1 (tenth grade) of a state upper secondary school in Athens, Greece. The effect of student motivational style according to the four Adar categories was examined in this work. Adar (1969) proposed the categorisation of pupils into four motivational styles, recognizing that there would be some overlap between styles. Adar’s four groupings were the following:
The achiever: one who had a distinct preference for an expository method of teaching and learning; who enjoyed the challenge of competing with others for top marks; who disliked being held back by slow learners.
The conscientious: one who also preferred an expository method of teaching and learning; who felt secure only when given clear objectives and precise instructions; who set out to please the teacher and to meet the expectations of the home; who was assiduous about examination preparation and hard work.
The curious: one who preferred freedom in learning and discovering; who enjoyed open-ended tasks and found rigid instructions irksome.
The social: one who was very sociable and group conscious; who preferred to study with friends and to discuss problems; who was so involved in social events that time for consistent studying tended to be limited and last-minute.
Data analysis showed that 31.8% of students were classified as conscientious, 45.9% as curious, 19.3% as sociable, and only 3.0% (4 students) as achievers. It also found that analogies can be more effective for most students. The motivational trait plays a definitive role, with the curious students being more positive towards analogies than conscientious and sociable students.
Considering the implications for instruction, researchers suggested that analogies should be used only when they contribute significantly to acquiring new concepts and processes. Thus the use of analogies is linked with the difficulty of the target domain for the learner. Analogies should be, and are used as an aid to understanding when the target is difficult to understand.

This document was selected because it is a piece of original scientific research and its conclusions are drawn on the analysis in a naturalistic setting. It is worth pointing out that this piece of research work is so far the only one aiming at measuring Greek secondary student motivation and the motivational impact of an instructional material (analogies) on the students.
The measurement of motivation is very difficult because it is certain that few individuals are driven by one simple homogeneous set of closely interrelated factors. However, this document describes a useful model for categorizing pupils into four motivational styles. As few individuals would fit neatly and entirely into any one of these styles, it was anticipated that any test for these characteristics would yield overlaps: in this way some pupils are anticipated to belong mainly in one category, however other pupils could be found to possess elements of different styles so that they cannot be strictly categorized.
The findings presented in this document could be very useful for teachers as well as for educational policy makers. Teachers could be aided in designing more appealing instructional modules by taking into account the factors that influence students’ motivation to learn. Policy makers could take into account the importance of creating and sustaining student motivation during curriculum and textbook design.

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