Chinese Journal of Science Education

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to investigate the quality differences of self-generated analogies among pre-service chemistry teachers with different academic achievement. The content of self-generated analogies were induced from six open-ended questions classified as two parts, “Electrochemical Cells” and “Concentration Cells”. The questions in “Electrochemical Cells” were “functions of salt bridges”, “ions’ movement paths”, and “electron movement path”, and the questions in the second part were “reaction direction and electron movement path”, “ions’ movement paths”, and “the change of entropy before and after reaction”.

The test results of thirty-four pre-service chemistry teachers uncovered the following findings:

1. The differences of quality of self-generated analogies might resulted from complexities of target concepts, prior knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge of participants.
2. The quality of self-generated analogies could be promoted by group discussion, because it served as scaffold for pre-service chemistry teachers to aware the deficiencies of his own analogies, understand more about target concepts, and elaborate upon analogies.
3. There was a significant relationship between the pre-service teachers’ reflective ability and the quality of self-generated analogy. It indicated that reflection could scout the deficiencies of analogies and then upgrade the qualities of self-generated analogies.
4. There was a significant relationship among the scores of concept maps and the qualities of self-generated analogies. It indicated that pre-service chemistry teachers with completed and integrated knowledge structures had more effective analogical mapping.

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