Rendezvous with a quantum of learning

Abstract

This chapter is about central ideas about how research on the bridge between cognitive psychology and theories of learning and instruction can be conducted in general and what methodological and logical traps may come with this special endeavor. These conclusions can be made on the basis of decades of consistent and complementary research on mental model theory and on model based learning and instruction. The chapter begins with a presentation and discussion of design experiments and extended design experiments from the tradition of experimental research and their relations to practical feasibility and to different traditions and paradigms from the philosophy of science. Then, common and new metaphors for the interpretation of effects for the empirical levels of the methodo logical assumptions are introduced and discussed against the backdrop of applied theory of learning and instruction. © 2008 Springer-Verlag US.