Science meets metaphor: Teaching and communicating about abstract concepts in Romanian science textbooks

Abstract

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.