Students' Misunderstanding of Teaching Metaphors : Understanding the Transfer of Electrons in a Daniell's Cell

Abstract

High school students' interpretations of metaphors and their teacher's use of explanatory metaphors were analyzed and compared in identifying the key processes in metaphorical understanding. After instruction, three classes of students were interviewed; one class was taught metaphorically, the other two were not. The teaching metaphor likened the transfer of electrons in a Daniell's Cell to the transfer of money. Most of the students in the first class were able to understand the concepts with actual feelings, at least to some extent. Some students as a result became interested in the cell and were motivated. Some students, however, understood the correlation between the base (metaphor) and the target of the teaching metaphor as follows. When the metaphor worked as a structural metaphor, the base itself was interpreted metaphorically (ontologiocal, orientational metaphors) and metonomically. The shared properties and the unshared properties placed in subordinate categories of the base were then mapped onto the target uncriticalIy. As a result, they misunderstood the concept. The use of metaphors generated by the students themselves was ebserved; their misunderstandings also infiuenced those metaphors.