The idea of novices and experts applying analogies differently is very intriguing. Broadly put, while novices apply analogies between specific attributes thereby capturing details, experts apply attributes at a higher level of abstraction allowing them to synthesize relational information between the source and the target domain.
Being an engineer, I am curious to know how novice and expert engineers use analogies and metaphors in their tasks. Since engineers are trained to be essentially problem solvers, I believe that their mental representation of an engineering problem would have problem and solution spaces. Further, these two spaces would evolve (and maybe even inter-mingle) as the engineer discovers more knowledge about the problem. However, what sets expert engineers apart from novice engineers in terms of their approach to design problems?
The answer, I believe, lies in the space where analogies are used. Since experts are more confident about their abilities due to their familiarity with the process of engineering in general, they would use analogies to create mental representations of the solution space. On the contrary, novice engineers would try to understand the problem better, thereby using analogies to create mental representations of the problem formulation space.
The two types of analogies available to the engineers would be case based, i.e., within-domain and schema-based, i.e., between-domain analogies. In my opinion, problem solving utilizes both these modes of analogy at different stages. Problem identification would require case based reasoning as details of the problem need to be captured, explanations would require schema based reasoning to allow cross domain information transfer and problem solving would require a mix of both where formulation is heavy on case based analogies and solving is heavy on schema based analogies.
Finally, I think that experts would mentally use more of the mixed mode which consists of both case and schema based analogies and novices would mentally use the case based, within-domain analogy simply because they are trying to understand the problem better.
Being an engineer, I am curious to know how novice and expert engineers use analogies and metaphors in their tasks. Since engineers are trained to be essentially problem solvers, I believe that their mental representation of an engineering problem would have problem and solution spaces. Further, these two spaces would evolve (and maybe even inter-mingle) as the engineer discovers more knowledge about the problem. However, what sets expert engineers apart from novice engineers in terms of their approach to design problems?
The answer, I believe, lies in the space where analogies are used. Since experts are more confident about their abilities due to their familiarity with the process of engineering in general, they would use analogies to create mental representations of the solution space. On the contrary, novice engineers would try to understand the problem better, thereby using analogies to create mental representations of the problem formulation space.
The two types of analogies available to the engineers would be case based, i.e., within-domain and schema-based, i.e., between-domain analogies. In my opinion, problem solving utilizes both these modes of analogy at different stages. Problem identification would require case based reasoning as details of the problem need to be captured, explanations would require schema based reasoning to allow cross domain information transfer and problem solving would require a mix of both where formulation is heavy on case based analogies and solving is heavy on schema based analogies.
Finally, I think that experts would mentally use more of the mixed mode which consists of both case and schema based analogies and novices would mentally use the case based, within-domain analogy simply because they are trying to understand the problem better.
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