Constructing analogies: Developing critical thinking through a collaborative task
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View abstract on PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.Students dramatically improved critical thinking skills by creating complex analogies in pairs. This collaborative approach enhances learning and is essential for academic and professional success.
Area Of Science
- Biology Education
- Cognitive Science
Background
- Analogies are common in STEM education for simplifying complex topics.
- Typically, instructors generate analogies, limiting student engagement and skill development.
Purpose Of The Study
- To investigate if students creating extended analogies enhances content knowledge and critical thinking.
- To compare the impact of individual versus collaborative analogy construction.
Main Methods
- Qualitative study with 30 college biology students.
- Students constructed analogies on genetic information flow, first with familiar, then challenging items.
- Analogy complexity and content knowledge were scored using a novel scheme.
Main Results
- Students showed moderate improvement with practice alone.
- Significant gains in critical thinking were observed when students collaborated in pairs.
- Collaborative analogy construction yielded greater improvements than individual work.
Conclusions
- Having students construct complex analogies in pairs is a high-impact educational practice.
- Collaboration fosters critical thinking by requiring justification and critique of ideas.
- This method is crucial for developing essential academic and professional skills.
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