Archived: Slide 22 -- How can laboratory research in cognitive and developmental psychology contribute to science education (and vice versa)?

A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

How can laboratory research in cognitive and developmental psychology contribute to science education.(and vice versa)?


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Slide 22

SPRINGS: an unconfounded test for length

	A	B
Length	short	long
Width	wide	wide
Wire	thin	thin
Weight	light	light

Image showing two springs hanging from wire.

Speaker's notes to explain the slide:

This is one of our Domains. Children have to set up an experiment that determines how different factors affect spring elongation.

They have a set of eight springs and four weights to choose from.
This is a good (unconfounded) experiment to see if the LENGTH of a spring matters in how far it stretches.

We call the thing being tested here the “FOCAL” variable.
Since the only thing that is different here is the focal variable, and the others are the same, this is a good experiment.