Teaching Psychology to the High School students has always been interesting when it comes to topics such as qualitative/quantitative research methods, and reliabilty/validity. While I get some great debates for the former, the latter always causes some confusion. It seems that the only now that I teach middle school science, I see the confusion forming. There must be a more efficient way to teach this. I have tried different analogies, and pictures, but I still get:
Anyway, this is another one of my questions to try and solve.
The best I have so far is:
- Reliablity on a dart board, would all hit the same spot and
- Validity is when something influences the darts: like one time you use darts, another time you use magnetic balls.
Then, I suppose when it becomes clearer to the Middle schoolers- when do you bring in ecological, external and internal validity. What is the difference between internal validity and reliability? Anyone have any good tools for this? I will post what I find as comments below.
Have you tried making the connection between reliability/validity and precise/accurate? This might be particularly useful in grade 7 science when discussing results of measurements, etc.
Thanks Hamada, Yeah I’ve tried that. It just seems that something is always lost or vacant. We have the accuracy/precision posters up in the classroom.. and the dartboard picture that goes with it….
Most kids appear to get it, but I’m just not sure how much it sinks in!