Analogies

An analogy is a comparison of two things that are alike in some way. Research has shown that analogies can help participants understand the structure of new material in terms of what they already know. You can help participants recognize key features of a new concept by creating analogies based on physical similarities or other relationships such as synonyms, antonyms, part/whole, cause effect, thing/function, etc.

Analogies are very useful but they have their limitations. Participants can learn the analogy but not truly understand the underlying relationship. When that happens, they are unable to transfer their knowledge to a new situation. You can help them stretch their understanding by providing more than one analogy. Or ask them to come up with their own analogy and share it with a partner or small group. If you overhear an incorrect analogy, you can help the participant understand what is incorrect about the relationship they are trying to make and suggest another conceptually correct one.


Examples

During his NHI “Instructor Development Course” training presentation, “Highway Plan Reading: Centerline Stationing,” Jeff Jasper used a knotted rope as an analogy to explain highway stationing notation (figure 17).

“Highway stationing might be compared with a rope having knots at 100-foot intervals. The beginning of the rope would be 0, the first knot at 100 feet would be Station number 1 and would be written as 1+00. The second station number would be 2 (which is 200 feet from the beginning) and would be written as 2+00 and so on.”

A knotted rope is used as an analogy for highway station numbering. Knots are placed at 100 foot intervals. The end of the rope is labeled 0, the first knot is labeled 1, the second knot is labeled 2.

Source: Jasper (2018).

Figure 17: Highway station numbering using a knotted rope analogy