Conceptual Change When Learning Experimental Design

As indicated by the other chapters in the volume, there are important cross-domain commonalities in conceptual change processes. However, some processes of conceptual change are specific to the domain in which those concepts are situated. In this chapter we describe several processes that support changes in how children think about a small, but essential, domain-general part of middle school science instruction: the design of simple experiments (typically dubbed the "control of variables strategy" or "CVS").