Analogies鈥攈elpful or hurtful? NSF funding helps 桃花直播 psychology researcher find out
Contact: Sarah Nicholas
STARKVILLE, Miss.鈥斺淭he Earth鈥檚 crust is like a multi-layered cake鈥 is just one analogy educators use to teach students about the complex layers of the Earth. Now a 桃花直播 State University psychology faculty member is using part of a $1.5 million National Science Foundation grant to study how analogies may help鈥攐r hinder鈥攕tudent learning.
鈥淎nalogies pervade textbooks and other teaching materials in geology and other STEM fields,鈥 said Allison Jaeger, an assistant professor in 桃花直播鈥檚 Department of Psychology and principal investigator of the NSF grant. 鈥淎nalogies are widely thought to be effective teaching tools because they take something that students are already familiar with and relate it to a new unfamiliar concept. But this same feature could potentially lead to illusions of understanding.鈥
Jaeger said students may assume that if they understand the familiar thing鈥攖he layered cake analogy鈥攖hey will easily understand unfamiliar topics such as strata in the Earth鈥檚 crust. However, the scientific concept may be far more complex and possess features that the simple, familiar example does not.
鈥淚f the limits of the analogy are not detailed for the student, they may become overconfident in their knowledge and fail to put forth the additional effort needed for full understanding. This would be an error in metacomprehension that can undermine effective self-regulated learning behaviors,鈥 Jaeger said.
Part of a collaborative grant with researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northern Illinois University鈥斺淐ollaborative Research: Effects of instructional analogies on illusions of understanding in Introductory Geoscience鈥濃擩aeger is working with 桃花直播 geosciences faculty members Kelsey Crane and John Ezell managing $305,201 of the $1,563,878 award.
At 桃花直播, the researchers will explore how analogies are used in undergraduate introductory geology courses to explore their potential negative impact on the accuracy of students鈥 judgments about their own knowledge and to develop lessons aimed at eliminating or reducing this negative impact.聽
A native of Minnesota, Jaeger has been an 桃花直播 faculty member since 2022. She teaches undergraduate statistics in psychology as well as graduate-level cognitive psychology courses.
For more details about 桃花直播鈥檚 College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Psychology, visit and .
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