Analogy is a powerful tool for fostering conceptual understanding and transfer in STEM and other fields. Well-constructed analogical comparisons focus attention on the causal-relational structure of STEM concepts, and provide a powerful capability to draw inferences based on a well-understood source domain that can be applied to a novel target domain. However, analogy must be applied with consideration to students' prior knowledge and cognitive resources. We briefly review theoretical and empirical support for incorporating analogy into education, and recommend five general principles to guide its application so as to maximize the potential benefits. For analogies to be effective, instructors should use well-understood source analogs and explain correspondences fully; use visuospatial and verbal supports to emphasize shared structure among analogs; discuss the alignment between semantic and formal representations; reduce extraneous cognitive load imposed by analogical comparison; and encourage generation of inferences when students have some proficiency with the material. These principles can be applied flexibly to topics in a wide variety of domains.

中文翻译：

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类比教学：从理论到实践

类比是在 STEM 和其他领域促进概念理解和转移的强大工具。结构良好的类比比较将注意力集中在 STEM 概念的因果关系结构上，并提供强大的能力，可以根据可应用于新目标域的易于理解的源域进行推理。然而，类比的应用必须考虑到学生的先验知识和认知资源。我们简要回顾了将类比纳入教育的理论和实证支持，并推荐了五个一般原则来指导其应用，以最大限度地发挥潜在的好处。为了使类比有效，教师应使用易于理解的源类比并充分解释对应关系；使用视觉空间和语言支持来强调类似物之间的共享结构；讨论语义和形式表示之间的一致性；减少类比比较带来的额外认知负担；当学生对材料有一定的熟练程度时，鼓励他们进行推理。这些原则可以灵活地应用于各种领域的主题。