METAPHORICAL REASONING ABOUT GENETICS

This paper describes a study of how people use metaphors to make sense of scientific phenomena and ideas in a process of extended group disc ussion. Interviews involving reading an edited scientific text about D NA and then discussing a number of questions about various aspects of genetics were conducted with 14 primary school teachers in the London area. These questions explored puzzling aspects of genetics and went b eyond the ideas given in the text, thus requiring information in the t ext to be combined with whatever the teachers already knew, in an acti ve process of imaginative development of aspects of metaphors, to look for a fit or lack of fit with a partially understood phenomenon. The results discuss how different metaphorical models for genes were both assimilated and constructed, as well as how drawing parallels and anal ogies facilitate making connections between everyday pragmatic knowled ge and scientific ideas.