High School student s familiarity with analogue situations

Abstract

The following paper presents a study about the student familiarity
with analogue situations. In order to do this, it was determined to
what extent analogue situations presented to students in teaching
activities can be considered familiar as well as their justifications
given to evaluate the familiarity. Then, firstly were used some
questionnaires that were applied to 112 second and third grade
students of four High Schools in Candelária, Nova Palma and
Santa Maria in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. After that,
some individual interviews with a sample of 06 students from one of the schools involved in the study was done. The answer analysis
showed that: a) the students considered familiar just the situations
effectively lived; b) some students created new analogies,
comparing them to the ones already presented, just changing from
student to student the analogy elaborated; c) the analogues that
seem appropriated to scientists and teachers sometimes were not
presented in the same way to the students, once they rejected them;
d) the need for justifying the analogues familiarity enabled the
students to explore their personal experiences in order to find out
other analogues that could justify the first ones; e) the
justifications to the familiarity came from different foundations
while some students recurred to lived situations and/or
professional experiences, others appeal to the knowledge classified
in the school contents; f) the students showed scientific knowledge
and information which were learned in and out of the school as well
as they used these knowledge and informations to produce their
answers; g) the analogues came from a conceptual topic of a
specific scientific domain, always face the risk of being little
familiar; h) in some regions, some analogue situations showed not
familiar to students and familiar to others; i) the socio-cultural
aspects from the region where the students live tend to condition
the knowledge they use to demonstrate upon the analogues.
Finally, it is suggested that teachers verify which analogues should
be used in a given context. Besides that, it is advisable, during the
analogy teaching, to give preference to analogues present in the
students everyday life or suggested by them.