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Prior research suggests that many students believe that the magnitude of the static frictional force is always equal to its maximum value. Here, we examine introductory students' ability to learn from analogical reasoning (with different scaffolding supports provided) between two problems that are similar in terms of the physics principle involved but one problem involves static friction, which often triggers the misleading notion. To help students process through the analogy deeply and contemplate whether the static frictional force was at its maximum value, students in different recitation classrooms received different scaffolding support. We discuss students' performance in different groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in cognitive science has shown that students typically have a difficult time acquiring deep conceptual understanding in domains like mathematics and physics and often rely on textbook examples to solve new problems. The use of prior examples facilitates learning, but the advantage is often limited to very similar problems. One reason students rely so heavily on using prior examples is that they lack a deep understanding for how the principles are instantiated in the examples. We review and present research aimed at helping students learn the relations between principles and examples through generating explanations and making analogies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a series of large-scale (N>100) studies of analogy use in college physics, we have explored how, when, and why analogies affect student reasoning. In the first of these studies, we demonstrated that analogies affect student reasoning when taught in a large enrollment physics course. In the present follow-up study, we demonstrate that teaching EM waves concepts implicitly via analogy leads to greater conceptual change compared to teaching explicitly without analogies. Students were divided into two groups, one taught using analogies (string and sound waves) and the other taught without analogies (EM waves only). On a targeted concept question given before and after instruction, students who were taught with analogies outperformed those taught without analogies demonstrating that analogies can affect student reasoning in productive ways, even when taught implicitly. We propose framing as a mechanism to begin to explain why analogies can be productive when used implicitly. © 2007 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]