A Functional Analogy on Instructor-Learner Interaction and Reversible Work-Meaningful Learning

Analogies can be powerful teaching tools because they can make new material intelligible to students by comparing it to material that is already familiar. In assisting students to understand chemistry concepts, teachers occasionally use analogies. These analogies are believed to help the students to structure the new knowledge and they are considered to be especially useful for topics of an abstract or submicroscopic nature. However, analogies have also been identified as a factor in the students' misunderstanding of chemical concepts. By a functional analogical approach constructed onto the two fundamental concepts (learning and the work in thermodynamics) in this study, the presentation of the similarities between the interactive nature of learning and the requirements enabling a mechanical change such as the reversible expansion is aimed.