"Aha!" Teaching by Analogy

© Copyright 2012 Dr Ted Bailey

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4669-4680-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-4679-8 (e)

Trafford rev. 07/12/2012

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PREFACE

PART ONE INTRODUCTION

ANALOGIES

1     ANALOGY’S COUSINS

2     CHANGING FAMILIAR IDEAS INTO NEW CONCEPTS

3     ANALOGIES ARRANGED ALPHABETICALLY

4     REASONS TO BE ANALOGICAL

PART TWO INTRODUCTION

A BIT OF THEORY

5     RATIONALE FOR ANALOGICAL TEACHING

6     INTRODUCING ANALOGICAL TEACHING

7     INDUCTIVE ANALOGY TEACHING

8     DEDUCTIVE ANALOGY TEACHING

9     THE ANALOGICAL PRIMER

10   ANALOGY TRAINING MODELS

POSTSCRIPT

REFERENCES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THERE ARE FAR too many people to acknowledge and thank for their help than can be individually mentioned here. They know who they are, because they are the anonymous teachers, trainers, and their students, who agreed to take part in the study and who provided many superb insights about the use of analogy in the classroom as indicated in the practical examples. I particularly wish to thank colleagues Keith Sellars for and Owen Tuckett for sharing ideas and reading early drafts and John Casnig in Canada for later drafts.

I also acknowledge that some of this material has appeared in a different form in the following journals: Social Science Teacher, EDUCA and International Journal of Lifelong Education; these are included in the references.

All illustrations by Ted Bailey except for the actual images.

PREFACE

SOME YEARS AGO, while sampling the delights of the Children’s Section of the Science Museum in London with my son, I spotted a couple of staff members with the word Explainer emblazoned on their shirts. Seeing this immediately jolted my consciousness. How can a mere word do that, I hear you ask? Obviously, you would expect staff to be on hand in museums to explain the various interactive exhibits, especially for children. At that very moment though, that word on their shirts just happened to chime perfectly with something similar lurking at the back of my mind. This was a long-standing yet partially dormant fascination with analogies and their explanatory effectiveness in teaching.

Just to establish a bit of history, let me be the explainer here. After a period of teaching, I took a sabbatical to study a knowledge field recently developed as an external exam course for college students. It was completely new to me and in the early days of teaching it in English Further Education colleges I initially encountered difficulties getting its abstract concepts across in a meaningful way to young students. Searching for a way through this explanatory bottleneck, I discovered that improvised sketches, often combined with light hearted analogies plucked from common sense experience, helped them understand these concepts better. Gradually, these ad hoc examples began to take shape as a coherent strategy whereby any analogical potential was ruthlessly exploited wherever appropriate to add extra impact to the lesson. After a while, these examples almost developed their own lives!

Many ex-students returned to visit from their universities and recalled how some of these humorous analogies had helped them study and recall complex ideas for their final exams. I took that to be a positive sign and later embarked on observational research into how other teachers, from a wide variety of knowledge and skill areas, applied this approach and to what effect. The majority of the examples included here are from that study.

Why analogies? Well, when faced with something new, we compare it to what we already know. We have been doing it subconsciously since infancy. We say something is ‘as’ or ‘like’ something else: ‘brave as a lion’ and ‘swims like a fish’ and so on. These are basic similes that help us compare unlike realms of experience. Analogies work on the same principle but are usually more elaborate and fluid and so have greater potential in thinking and explanation.

Have you used any kind of analogy today before reading this? Likely, you have at least once if not several times. When you say: Well, it’s rather like… or: Think of it as if it’s… an analogy is on its way. At that point, what you are actually doing is using your listener’s previous experience to help you get your point across more clearly and with greater impact.

Given that we are analogizing regularly in everyday communication, it naturally follows that it has promising potential in teaching. In a more formal setting, the same principle applies because analogy is a vital bridging tool between personal experience and any target study material. A major part of any teaching is spent revealing, explaining and simplifying new or difficult ideas or skills. An appropriate analogy can (a) ease and speed up this process considerably by using and validating the student’s prior experience as a starting point and (b) make the student feel more comfortable with the process and so boost confidence in learning.

After the museum visit and its effect on me, I wondered about how those Explainers were trained and how often they might use simple analogies to impart information and instructions to inquisitive children. That curiosity reinvigorated my previous interest in analogy and indirectly inspired this venture, which is grounded in personal experience of both subject teaching and teacher training, combined with the first-hand research.

What is this book about? Unlike many erudite studies of analogy which focus on Analogical Reasoning or Cognitive Science, this one focuses specifically on the practical application of analogies in teaching and training across a wide range of subjects, with some back up theory and models for guidance. Every attempt has been made to keep it simple and succinct.

Specifically, the book is divided in two parts: practical and theoretical, each with a brief introduction. The first part defines and compares metaphor, simile and analogy (Chapter 1), and discusses my early improvised analogies (Chapter 2). Chapter 3 presents a sample of analogies from teaching/training situations and everyday communication. These are organized alphabetically for easy reference and include some explanations and comments. All actual metaphorical or analogous expressions are in italics. Some employ a question and answer approach to emphasize the thinking behind them. This approach is a bit like a cookbook with analogies as recipes that can be followed or adapted to other meals with imaginative thinking. You can obviously think up many more, so please adopt, adapt and apply.

The second part briefly addresses the notion of analogy itself. Chapter 5 presents an underlying rationale for using analogy in teaching, and this is followed by inductive and deductive models with actual examples of delivery to show how they work.

The study shows analogy to be equally effective across the widest range of study domains, so I strongly advocate developing this analogical strategy as part of any type of teaching or training in whatever form or environment it occurs. Hopefully, this book will fire your imagination and inspire you to apply and enjoy analogizing in your practice to the benefit of all your students.

The observed teaching examples reflect a variety of settings, so the word ‘classroom’ is used loosely as a convenient descriptor. Any technical language is italicized, while the examples appear verbatim within quotation marks with the analogies themselves in italics. Author acknowledgments are minimal in the text to avoid undue distraction but full details are in the list of references.

The research was conducted in the UK but I am convinced that these examples are potentially cross-cultural with adaptation.

Finally, the insurance clause: I take full responsibility for both the interpretation of all analogies herein and the conclusions that follow.

Ted Bailey, UK.

©2011

PART ONE INTRODUCTION

ANALOGIES

WHEN TEACHERS ARE delivering new ideas or skills, they often start by analogizing them with something from the familiar experience of the learner. In this way analogies are like speech dialects, which are language forms used by specific groups. Using a dialect is rather like you are on the inside lane of a race track, with its advantages, while others are on the outside. That last sentence itself is an example of using an extended analogy to make a point. Both analogies and dialects are similar because they draw upon the particular experience of learners or listeners; but this is further compared with yet another different sphere: being a runner on the inside lane.

Analogies are easily shoehorned into any speech or writing, from everyday conversation to serious academic research. They usually arise when there is a need to describe or explain a topic in some detail. For instance, take this girl arranging a lift with her father from a friend’s house, number unknown. You know that road… it’s like a lollipop, yes? He has a rough idea. Well, she lives at the top of the lollipop. From this we easily grasp that the road is a cul-de-sac, similar in shape to a kid’s lollipop, and the house is at its apex (at the top of the lollipop). Her father knows the neighborhood generally but not the exact location of the house. The lollipop idea enters and the situation is quickly clarified.

The lollipop is a graphic prompt that adds a memorable impact to the directions, but also cuts through a longer explanation. Analogies require a variable degree of deliberation and, ironically, although seemingly subconscious and spontaneous, the girl’s example required a modicum of forethought. It may not be planning in the strictest sense but despite surface appearances there is a pressing need to seek and develop an analogical comparison to make the point.

In a way, we can make an analogy between giving directions and teaching whereby the target knowledge required is likened to the sought destination. Obviously, teaching operates in a more deliberate and formal fashion than everyday conversation but the principle remains the same. A good analogy in teaching immediately refers to shared common sense about the world so as to connect it with the idea targeted for learning. The analogy unites the two realms, the familiar with the as yet unknown and, if successful, this juxtaposition leads to something completely different which settles into our previous store of knowledge.

Of course, there are many factors at work here, such as how appropriate the analogy is to