The effectiveness of using student and teacher centered analogies on the development of the students’ cognitive and affective skills

Before the application, no significant difference was obtained between the achievement, conceptual understanding level and attitude toward science course scale results of the students in both groups where the student and teacher centered analogy technique was used. In this respect, it is accepted that both of the group were equal to each other and it was also assumed that the groups were homogenous.

It is seen that there is a significant difference between the pre- test and post-test, conceptual understanding level and attitude toward science course scale results of the students in the class where the student centered analogy technique is used. Similarly, a significant difference is obtained between the pre-test and post-test, conceptual understanding level and attitude scale results of the students in the class where the student centered analogy technique is used. Obtaining the significant difference between the success, conceptual understanding level and attitude scale results after teaching students in both of the groups is an expected situation as a result of learning a new subject which is not known and which is not familiar for the students before.

When the post-tests of the groups are compared as a result of our study, statistically no significant difference could be obtained with regard to the success. When our result is evaluated according to the studies which are carried out on the comparison of the analogy technique and the other techniques in the past, in the study carried out by Karadogu (2007), he concluded that the courses which are taught by means of the analogy do not produce a significant difference in success in comparison with the courses which are taught by means of using the teachers’ guide only. In our study, the difficulty of the students in this age group in using and understanding the analogy technique in an entire subject by them. Insufficient level of the pre-learning process of the students because the school is a small town school may be influential in the failure in obtaining a significant difference in success.

After-application, when conceptual understanding level results of the groups are compared, it is concluded that the class in which the student centered analogy technique is used is more successful. When the analogy technique is used appropriately, it can be important factor which helps the students without exposing them to concept confusion, improving their effective listening, problem solving, establishing communication with their peers, converting the abstract concepts into concrete ones and ensures a better learning process. Especially the usage of the short and simple analogies by the students helps the students to understand and learn the concepts easily. Akyüz (2007) and Sagirli (2002) also compared the analogy technique and the traditional explaining method in their study and they concluded that the group in which the analogy technique is used is more successful with regard to the perception levels of the students.

In our study, it was seen that the attitudes of the students towards the course in both groups in which the student and teacher centered analogy technique were used changed positively. However there is not any statistical significant difference between both of the groups. There are not only studies which reach the conclusion that the analogy technique influences the attitude (Sagirli, 2002; Kaptan and Arslan, 2002), but also there are studies which reach the conclusion that it does not have any influence at all (Karadogu, 2007). In addition to this, it is seen that the attitudes of the students in both of the groups vary according to the gender and it shows a significant difference in favor of the female students. In line with this result, in the study of Karadogu (2007), it is concluded that the points of the students differed according to gender in the last application and this difference is in favor of the female students. The illustrated analogy technique is used in the study. Because the female students in this age group attach more importance to the visual images, this situation may ensure their development of positive attitudes. In addition to this, the students were divided into groups for the purpose of observing whether the students will form the analogies which are close to their own areas of interest or not. It was also seen that the groups which were formed by the students form analogies which are close to their areas of interest such as a football match, military, traffic for the male students and such as shopping center, hospital for the female students. Similarly, in the study which is carried out with 700 7th and 8th grade students by Pittman (1999), he requested the female and male students to form their own analogies separately and it was seen that the students form the analogies which are close to their own areas of interest, similar to the results in our study.

As a consequence, we could say that the student centered analogy technique, in comparison with the teacher centered analogy technique, is a technique which is more effective in the concept learning process particularly when it is enhanced with the illustrations and which ensures the active participation of the students in the class by establishing correlation between the daily knowledge and the scientific knowledge by means of revealing the pre-learning of the students.