The Use of Analogies in Science Communication: Effectiveness of an Activity in Initial Primary Science Teacher Education
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The Use of Analogies in Science Communication: Effectiveness of an Activity in Initial Primary Science Teacher Education Antonio García-Carmona 1 Received: 22 May 2020 / Accepted: 27 August 2020/ # Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan 2020
Abstract This article presents a study focused on analysing the effectiveness of an activity about the use of analogies in science communication. The activity consisted of reading two science articles published in a prestigious digital newspaper about the first image of a black hole. The purpose was (i) to identify and analyse the analogies used in the news articles and (ii) to assess the advantages and possible limitations of their use in communicating scientific ideas. The activity was performed with prospective primary education teachers (PPTs) who were receiving instruction in science teaching. Their responses were analysed descriptively with a rubric developed in accordance with methods of qualitative content analysis. The results indicate that the PPTs achieved a moderate progression in their conceptions of the use of analogies in science communication and, overall, it can be said that the activity had a positive educative effect. Finally, a discussion of the implications and limitations of the study for PPTs’ training in the use of analogies is presented. Keywords Analogy . Digital press . Prospective primary teachers . Science communication
. Science teaching
Introduction Today’s society demands that citizens have a scientific literacy that allows them to be informed of science’s advances, assess their socio-economic and environmental repercussions and critically form opinions about them so as to make responsible decisions (Hazelkorn et al., 2015; Siarova, Sternadel, & Szönyi, 2019). For the vast majority of the population, the main source of information about the development of contemporary * Antonio García-Carmona garcia–[email protected]
1
Departamento de Didáctica de las Ciencias Experimentales y Sociales, Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad de Sevilla, Calle Pirotecnia S/N., 41013 Sevilla, Spain
A. García-Carmona
science is that offered by the media (Jarman & McClune, 2007), especially the science sections usually included in prestigious newspapers (Miller, 2004). Therefore, reading and analysing science news published in the media, such as the digital press, should be an essential and routine activity within basic science education (García-Carmona, 2014; Höttecke & Allchin, 2020). This is clearly suggested, for example, in the Spanish science curriculum for lower secondary education (12 – 16 years) when it states that pupils must ‘interpret information about scientific issues which appears in publications and the media’ (Ministry of Education, 2015, p. 258). The recommendation is to start with the development of this competency during the primary education stage (6 – 12 years) (Weissmann, 2014), something that the official science curriculum of this stage makes equally explicit through the following learning standard (Ministry of Education, 2
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