2022 Volume 63 Issue 1 Pages 95-106
The importance of the ability to explain scientific phenomena to others intelligibly has been argued. In this study, we identified what kind of characteristics of an analogy and how to handle it they must understand when students use analogies in the explanation for scientific phenomena. We have extracted the importance to refer to “limitation of analogy” which means some properties cannnot be reproduced by analogy, and to quantitative “similarity of the causal relationship” between the contents. According to this knowledge, we have built a lesson plan to teach them to students, practiced the lesson for students in the second grade of a lower secondary school, and investigated changes in students’ use of analogies between before and after the classs practice. Although, the number of students who focused on and mentioned “limitation of analogy” was increased, notable effect was not observed. Regarding “similarity of the causal relationship”, although the number of students who had the consciousness to pay attention was increased, the situation was different between the classes. It has also been revealed that the “one-to-one correspondence constraint” that an element in the content newly introduced to explain is connected to an element in the content to be explained must be understood by students.
