This study investigated the effects of using concrete analogies in learning selected physiological and pathophysiological abstractions inherent in nursing. The purposes of the study were to determine if such a strategy was more effective than traditional teaching strategies and to determine if such a strategy was more effective for nonformal operational subjects as compared to formal operational subjects.

Sixty-five baccalaureate nursing students volunteered from a population of 268 nursing students. Cognitive development was measured by the score on the Classroom Test of Formal Operations. The results on the instrument indicated that out of the sixty-five subjects, thirty-eight were operating at less than formal operational levels. The subjects were randomly assigned to the experimental group or the control group. Each group had subgroups of nonformal and formal operational subjects. A pretest/posttest design was used. The experimental group had slide-tape classes which included concrete analogies representative of selected abstractions. The control group had slide-tape classes without the concrete analogies. After the classes, a posttest was administered.

Analysis of covariance of the data indicated that the experimental group did significantly better than the control group at the 0.000 level of significance. The nonformal operational subjects in the experimental group performed significantly better than the nonformal operational subjects in the control group at the 0.000 level of significance. The formal operational subjects in the experimental group did not perform significantly better than the formal operational subjects of the control group (significance of F = 0.148). The results indicated that there was no significant difference in the performance of the nonformal operational subjects in experimental group compared to the formal operational subjects in either the experimental or control group (significance of F = 0.143 and F = 0.369, respectively). The results of the study indicate that the use of concrete analogies of physiological and pathophysiological abstractions is an effective teaching strategy for nonformal operational students.