Examining different analogical reasoning with recognition how to influence middle school students' science learning: An eyetracking analysis

In recent, several studies devoted to investigate the relationship between eye movements and the construction of scientific concepts, and to explore how eye movements reflect students' cognitive processes on learning scientific concepts, such as students’ eye movement behaviors predicted their computer-based assessment performance in different presentation modalities (Chen, She, Chuang, Wu, Tsai, & Jung, 2014), and demonstrated a close relationship to exist between students’ eye movement behaviors and the construction of mental models during learning the atomic orbital concepts (Chen, Hsiao, & She, 2015). Several previous studies in science education illustrated that applying analogical reasoning was beneficial for students to gain the scientific concepts (Brown & Clement, 1989; Glynn et al., 1995; Spiro et al., 1989; Zeitoun, 1984). However, due to analogical reasoning existing the complex and dynamic cognitive process (Gentner, Bowdle, Wolff, & Boronat, 2001), and lacking of the appropriate research tools to analyze them, there is still a lack of empirical studies that explore whether eye movement behaviors are related to students’ analogical reasoning. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the impact of the different ways of analogical reasoning on students’ electricity concepts construction and analogical reasoning ability. In addition, employing the eye-tracking technique to collect students’ eye movement behaviors, this study also aimed to investigate and to detect the relationship among the process of students’ electricity concepts construction and analogical reasoning. A total of 24 ninth grade students from Miaoli County were recruited to participate in the study and were randomly assigned into the three groups. Students in different group received different ways of analogical reasoning materials (initial alignment, initial projection, and initial abstraction) for learning electricity concepts. Our research instruments, including building the online multimedia science learning courses, as well as providing with the electricity learning achievement test and the analogical reasoning ability test for pre-test and post-test. Moreover, the eye tracker collected students’ data and further analysis about their dynamic cognitive processes. Results showed that the initial alignment group or the initial abstraction group outperformed the initial projection group on students’ electricity concepts and analogical reasoning ability. It was consistent with their eye movement patterns results that students who received with initial alignment or initial abstraction materials allocated significantly more mapping processing and integrating processing than students in the initial projection group. It is believed that our results not only make us understand the effect of different ways of analogical reasoning on students’ science learning but also comprehend the relationship between their analogical reasoning and eye movement behaviors.