When Is an Interview an Inter View? The Historical and Recent Development of Methodologies Used to Investigate Children's Astronomy Knowledge.

This paper provides a historical review of the interview research that has been used by science educators to investigate children's basic astronomy knowledge. A wide range of strategies have been developed over the last 120 years or so as successive teams of researchers have endeavoured to overcome the methodological difficulties that have arisen. Hence, it looks critically at the techniques that have been developed to tackle the problems associated with interviews, questionnaires and tests used to research cognitive development and knowledge acquisition.