Future teachers’ spontaneous use of analogies in explaining concepts

Abstract

The use of analogies in teaching can significantly enhance its efficiency. Therefore, it is important for future teachers to master the basic skills of the successful use of analogies even during their pre-service education. The paper presents the results of a research conducted on the sample of students, future teachers, with the aim of measuring their tendency to spontaneously use analogies in the situations in which they needed to explain the meaning of certain concepts. The task of the respondents was to write down, at their own discretion, explanations of certain concepts related to life and work at the faculty in such a way that a ten-year-old child should be able to understand them. Content analysis was used to analyse the explanations and determine the presence of analogies in explanations. The obtained results indicate that the frequency of use of analogies in the pedagogical context can be high in the conditions suitable for their use. There is a certain number of respondents who, even in these conditions, still do not use analogies. The ones who do use them are mostly sensitive towards the fulfilment of conditions for their successful use and state that more difficult to explain are the concepts for which the use of analogies in clarification may be questionable because there is a possibility for children to misinterpret them. The respondents who were more inclined towards using analogies had a somewhat higher achievement during their studies. Based on the results, it is possible to offer some recommendations related to the professional training of future teachers. When developing the skill of using analogies in teaching, it is necessary to take into account the differences between teachers with respect to their tendency to use analogies. One part of teachers do not show tendency towards using analogies, and they need special support in the development of this skill. Additionally, such teachers assess the difficulty of explaining concepts differently compared to those who are more prone using analogies. The development of the skill of using analogies is not only useful from the point of view of future teaching work, but also from the standpoint of success during studies. Future teachers can also apply analogies to improve the effectiveness of their own studying, which serves to train them for the teachers? profession.