Analogies in physics textbooks for the final grade of primary school

Abstract

The introductory part of the paper discusses some of the issues related to use of analogies in education and provides an overview of the basic foundations of the Structure- mapping theory - the theory that describes the way the analogies function. The second part of the paper presents the results of the analysis of the use of analogies in eighth-grade physics textbooks that are used in primary schools in Serbia. The results have shown that the frequency of using analogies is in the range usual for the textbooks of this type. Verbal analogies are dominant compared to the image and verbal and image analogies. Analogies are, proportionally, used most for the most abstract contents and the contents that are farthest from everyday students’ experience. When it comes to complexity, enriched analogies prevail, while the number of simple and extended analogies is significantly smaller. Textbook authors are sensitive towards the demand that the field which is the basis of analogy has to be well-known to students. In almost half of analogies the source domain was taken from everyday life experience of students.