Pre-Service Teachers Evaluating Online Texts About Learning Styles: There is Room for Improvement in Justifying the Credibility

Abstract

This study sought to understand pre-service teachers’ abilities to evaluate and justify the credibility of online texts on a common myth in education—learning styles. The participants were 169 pre-service teachers who completed a credibility evaluation task in a web-based environment. They read four researcher-designed online texts on learning styles; two texts were more credible, while two were less credible. Pre-service teachers evaluated the credibility of each text from four different perspectives and justified their evaluations. Most pre-service teachers were able to differentiate the more credible texts from the less credible ones; however, they struggled with justifying their credibility evaluations. Pre-service teachers’ justification ability supported the credibility evaluation of more and less credible texts, whereas their false prior beliefs about learning styles impeded the questioning of online texts whose contents were consistent with such beliefs. The results suggest that teacher education should support pre-service teachers’ reasoning ability concerning text credibility to prepare them for educating future critical online readers.