Chapter 5: Constructivist, Analogical, and Metacognitive Aproaches To Science Teaching and Learning

Quite often, children have ideas that are different from the scientifically “correct” ones (canonical ideas or concepts). Hence, the aim of teaching is to help children understand and appreciate the “correct” view of science and probably make a shift from the “nonscience” ideas (misconceptions or alternative frameworks) to the “correct” (canonical) ideas. This chapter discusses analogical strategies that embrace key constructivist principles that embody inquiry-framed science pedagogy intended to bring about the conceptual in students’ understanding. By employing analogical tools of making sense of new learning, this chapter will demonstrate the links between analogical learning and conceptual change theory. This is because analogical teaching and learning is necessarily constructivist. Constructivist pedagogy is necessarily inquiry based.