Browsing by Author "Guiu, Gabriela"

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Science meets metaphor: Teaching and communicating about abstract concepts in Romanian science textbooks
(2022) Negrea-Busuioc, Elena; Ștefăniță, Oana; Guiu, Gabriela
Metaphors and analogies are efficient and attractive tools used in science teaching to explain ab-stract ideas in simpler, familiar terms. Science textbook authors and teachers rely on metaphors and analo-gies to explain abstract scientific concepts and convey them to young learners. In this paper, we discussa corpus of metaphorical expressions found in Romanian physics and chemistry textbooks for second-ary education (grades 6-8), and classified based on target domains (i.e., the core scientific conceptspresented in the unit lessons of the analyzed textbooks) and source domains (i.e., the more concrete,more familiar concepts used to explain scientific concepts from the analyzed textbooks). Furthermore,we explore the way in which the identified and annotated metaphors may provide the basis for under-standing core concepts from physics (e.g., electricity in terms of ‘water flowing’) and chemistry (e.g.,electron shells as ‘field track lanes’). This study is part of a larger research project which aims is to ex-amine how metaphors and analogies used in Romanian science textbooks are understood and misun-derstood by young learners and what (mis-) understanding complex scientific ideas might mean forpupils’ preparedness to make sense of the world we live in and, ultimately, for their future engagementwith and interest in science.
The Impact of Parents’ Work Migration on the Social, Communication and Educational Experiences of Left-Behind Adolescents
(2022) Udrea, Georgiana; Guiu, Gabriela
"Parental work migration can pose important risks for adolescents, such as joining inappropriate peer-groups, poor results in education or school drop-out. It can also facilitate positive changes in young people’s behaviour, as many become aware of the sacrifices their parents make to provide them with a better lifestyle and education and behave responsibly in return. Given that the literature highlights both negative and positive transformations related to parents’ migration, our aim is to address the impact of migration on adolescents left behind in rural Romania from their own perspective. We focus on teenagers’ experiences of separation from their mother, father or both, in different situations (family life, communication and rela-tionships, caring and concern for others, school achievements, future migration plans). Young people’s agency – their capacity to self-educate and organise themselves to perform well at school and in everyday activities following parental migration – is less studied in Romania. Thus, in addition to making the reality of these adolescents better known, our approach provides information that can be turned into policy solutions aimed at improving their life quality."