Effects of Raising Student Teachers’ Metacognitive Awareness of Their Educational Psychological Misconceptions

Abstract

Fostering metacognitive awareness of misconceptions should enhance deep processing of scientifically correct explanations and thereby decrease misconceptions. To explore these potentially beneficial effects, we conducted a field study implemented in a regular educational psychology course in an Australian teacher education program. In a two-by-two within-subject experimental design, student teachers ( n = 119) answered misconception questionnaires, made metacognitive judgments, and participated in awareness activities at the start (T1) and the end (T2) of the semester (within-subject factor: time). Half of the misconception items focused on educational psychology course content, while the other half focused on related topics that were not covered in the course (non-course content). Awareness activities (AA) consisted of providing feedback regarding all misconception items. During the lectures, we provided additional scientifically correct refutational explanations (RE) regarding course content. Thus, we compared the combined AA+RE treatment for course content with the AA treatment for non-course content (within-subject factor: treatment). Our findings confirm that student teachers harbor numerous high-confidence educational psychological misconceptions. Furthermore, awareness activities plus refutational explanations resulted in significant increases in metacognitive awareness and in performance. Additionally, initial metacognitive overconfidence was related to persistent misconceptions, indicating that overconfidence may hinder correction of course content misconceptions.

On predictors of misconceptions about educational topics: A case of topic specificity

“…Our results support the importance of further developing such approaches to mitigate questionable beliefs, and this may play a specific role in interventions in higher education and teacher education. In particular, preservice teachers who have been found to belief in a number of educational myths when entering teacher education programs may profit from lectures with successful debunking strategies [ 5 ]. Interventions that take into account a recipient’s personal views and stances can be promising for educating future professionals towards more evidence-based decisions and actions.…”

“…Both education practitioners and the general public hold a huge variety of misconceptions about learning and education, with topics ranging broadly across matters of learning, teaching, and educational policy [ 1 – 5 ]. Harboring such misconceptions may harm judgments and actions in the context of private life, professional practice, and policymaking.…”

“…Therefore, uncovering and debunking education myths [ 6 – 9 ] and developing interventions to initiate their correction [ 2 , 10 ] have increasingly become hot topics, especially with a focus on preservice teachers. Remedying misconceptions, however, has been proven to be quite difficult [ 5 , 11 ]. Developing effective interventions for such hinges not only on their design but also on deepening our knowledge about the factors that make individuals susceptible to or resilient against misconceptions and that may moderate the intervention effects [ 12 , 13 ].…”

“…Third, personal views of what makes knowledge justified (i.e., epistemic orientation) may enforce the above processes when individuals consider their personal experience or intuitive persuasiveness more important than scientific evidence [ 11 , 25 ]. Finally, even when one is confronted with research-based evidence, the probabilistic and preliminary nature of scientific knowledge especially in the so-called soft sciences like education [ 26 , 27 ] may lead one to discount and reject research in favor of one’s own beliefs [ 5 ]. When individuals’ prior beliefs contradict research evidence, they tend to re-interpret, devalue, or even ignore the evidence altogether [ 28 – 30 ], and may even dismiss the potency of research to provide any relevant knowledge [ 23 , 31 ].…”

It’s Contagious! The Effects of Gamifying Refutation Texts on Emotions and Learning

“…Refutations are associated with higher levels of epistemic judgements regarding the plausibility, credibility, and quality of refutational evidence, which in turn predict revising incorrect beliefs (Flemming et al, 2020;Lombardi et al, 2016;Muis et al, 2020). Additionally, refutations increase metacognitive awareness of the conflict between old and new interpretations and of individuals' own understanding (Mason et al, 2017;Pieschl et al, 2021;Prinz et al, 2019), which are integral processes in changing prior beliefs (Vosniadou et al, 2001). As a result of these cognitive, affective, and metacognitive processes, refutations are consistently associated with gaining more accurate knowledge as well as other positive changes in related attitudes and policy support (Aguilar et al, 2019;Thacker et al, 2020;Tippett, 2010;Walter & Murphy, 2018).…”