This book brings together powerful ideas and new developments from internationally recognised scholars and classroom practitioners to provide theoretical and practical knowledge to inform progress in science education. This is achieved through a series of related chapters reporting research on analogy and metaphor in science education. Throughout the book, contributors not only highlight successful applications of analogies and metaphors, but also foreshadow exciting developments for research and practice. Themes include metaphor and analogy: best practice, as reasoning; for learning; applications in teacher development; in science education research; philosophical and theoretical foundations. Accordingly, the book is likely to appeal to a wide audience of science educators –classroom practitioners, student teachers, teacher educators and researchers.

Years ago a primary teacher told me about a great series of lessons she had just had. The class had visited rock pools on the seashore, and when she asked them about their observations they talked about: it was like a factory, it was like a church, it was like a garden, it was like our kitchen at breakfast time, etc. Each student’s analogy could be elaborated, and these analogies provided her with strongly engaged students and a great platform from which to develop their learning about biological diversity and interdependence. In everyday life we learn so many things by comparing and contrasting. The use of analogies and metaphors is important in science itself and their use in teaching science seems a natural extension, but textbooks with their own sparse logic, do not help teachers or students. David Ausubel in the 1960s had advocated the use of ‘advance organisers’ to introduce the teaching of conceptual material in the sciences, and some of these had an analogical character. However, research on the value of this idea was cumbersome and indecisive, and it ceased after just a few studies. In the 1980s research into children’s conceptions of scientific phenomena and concepts really burgeoned, and it was soon followed by an exploration of a new set of pedagogical strategies that recognised a student in a science class is much more than a tabula rasa.

Metaphors show students how to make connections between the concrete and the abstract, prior knowledge and unfamiliar concepts, and language and image. But teachers must learn how to use metaphors and analogies strategically and for specific purposes, helping students discover and deconstruct effective comparisons. Metaphors & Analogies is filled with provocative illustrations of metaphors in action and practical tips.

Introduces the diverse roles metaphors play in the life sciences and highlights their significance for theory, communication, and education.

Human beings rely equally on narrative (or storytelling) and metaphor (or analogy) for making sense of the world. Narrative and Metaphor in Education integrates the two perspectives of narrative and metaphor in educational theory and practice at every level from pre-school to lifelong civic education. Bringing together outstanding educational researchers, the book interweaves for the first time the rich strand of current research about how narrative may be used productively in education with more fragmentary research on the role of metaphor in education and invites readers to ‘look both ways.’ The book consists of research by 40 academics from many countries and disciplines, describing and analysing the intricate connections between narrative and metaphor as they manifest themselves in many fields of education, including: concepts of education, teacher identity and reflective practice, teaching across cultures, teaching science and history, using digital and visual media in teaching, fostering reconciliation in a postcolonial context, special needs education, civic and social education and educational policy-making. It is unique in combining study of the narrative perspective and the metaphor perspective, and in exploring such a comprehensive range of topics in education. Narrative and Metaphor in Education will be of great interest to academics and researchers in the fields of education and educational policy, as well as teacher educators, practising and future teachers. It will also appeal to psychologists, sociologists, applied linguists and communications specialists.

A multiple analogy is a structured comparison in which several sources are likened to a target. In Multiple analogies in science and philosophy, Shelley provides a thorough account of the cognitive representations and processes that participate in multiple analogy formation. Through analysis of real examples taken from the fields of evolutionary biology, archaeology, and Plato's Republic, Shelley argues that multiple analogies are not simply concatenated single analogies but are instead the general form of analogical inference, of which single analogies are a special case. The result is a truly general cognitive model of analogical inference.Shelley also shows how a cognitive account of multiple analogies addresses important philosophical issues such as the confidence that one may have in an analogical explanation, and the role of analogy in science and philosophy. This book lucidly demonstrates that important questions regarding analogical inference cannot be answered adequately by consideration of single analogies alone.

Analogy has been the focus of extensive research in cognitive science over the past two decades. Through analogy, novel situations and problems can be understood in terms of familiar ones. Indeed, a case can be made for analogical processing as the very core of cognition. This is the first book to span the full range of disciplines concerned with analogy. Its contributors represent cognitive, developmental, and comparative psychology; neuroscience; artificial intelligence; linguistics; and philosophy. The book is divided into three parts. The first part describes computational models of analogy as well as their relation to computational models of other cognitive processes. The second part addresses the role of analogy in a wide range of cognitive tasks, such as forming complex cognitive structures, conveying emotion, making decisions, and solving problems. The third part looks at the development of analogy in children and the possible use of analogy in nonhuman primates. Contributors Miriam Bassok, Consuelo B. Boronat, Brian Bowdle, Fintan Costello, Kevin Dunbar, Gilles Fauconnier, Kenneth D. Forbus, Dedre Gentner, Usha Goswami, Brett Gray, Graeme S. Halford, Douglas Hofstadter, Keith J. Holyoak, John E. Hummel, Mark T. Keane, Boicho N. Kokinov, Arthur B. Markman, C. Page Moreau, David L. Oden, Alexander A. Petrov, Steven Phillips, David Premack, Cameron Shelley, Paul Thagard, Roger K.R. Thompson, William H. Wilson, Phillip Wolff