Teaching on video as an instructional strategy to reduce confirmation bias—a pre-registered study

Abstract

The aim of this experiment was to examine the effect of different instructional strategies on student teachers' confirmation bias. Confirmation bias refers to the selectivity in finding and using evidence that fits one's own beliefs or hypotheses while neglecting evidence that is opposite to one's own beliefs or hypotheses (Nickerson, 1998). Dutch student teachers (n = 141) took a confirmation bias pre-test and were then randomly assigned to three conditions; teaching on video (TOV), preparing to teach (PTT) and re-study (CC). All participants received text-based instruction on confirmation bias and how it can be mitigated. They also practised with confirmation bias tasks and they received feedback on their answers. Subsequently, participants in the TOV and PTT conditions prepared a lesson about the instructional content and in the TOV condition they taught this lesson on video. After the learning phase, TOV and PTT participants completed a social presence questionnaire. All participants completed an arousal questionnaire and a confirmation bias post-test and a transfer test. The results showed that confirmation bias was reduced to a similar extent in all conditions. Results also showed that the quality of the prepared lesson was highest for TOV participants suggesting they had gained better understanding of the confirmation bias than PTT participants. Furthermore, in contrast to our expectations, PTT participants reported highest social presence scores. TOV participants experienced higher arousal levels compared to CC participants. Transfer scores did not differ between conditions. We discuss theoretical explanations of the findings from the present study.

The Effect of Animation-Guided Mindfulness Meditation on the Promotion of Creativity, Flow and Affect

“…Recently, many researchers found that learners' self-interpretation technique is an effective method to increase GCL. Studies have shown that animations can attract users' attention and motivate them to learn (van Brussel et al, 2021). Researchers proposed that inductive learning strategies and metacognitive monitoring cues can increase learners' GCL and improve their transfer performance.…”

Is video creation more effective than self-exercise in motor skill learning?

“…In contrast, teaching expectancy might play an essential role in the benefits of creating videos observed in previous studies ( Hoogerheide et al, 2018 , 2019 ). The studies on teaching by creating videos have shown that students in the teaching on video condition consistently outperform and report more engagement ( Hoogerheide et al, 2016 , 2018 , 2019 ; van Brussel et al, 2021 ). Future work should test whether a teaching expectancy enhances the benefits of creating a video on learning motor skills.…”

Comparing instructional strategies to support student teachers’ learning to prepare an open-minded citizenship education lesson

“…The social presence questionnaire with 10 statements (See Appendix B) was constructed by Van Brussel et al ( 2021 ), and in their study the Cronbach’s alpha was 0.73. In the social presence questionnaire participants had to indicate on a scale from (1) strongly disagree to (5) strongly agree to which degree each of the ten statements represents how they felt after the learning phase.…”

“…To measure arousal, the activitation-deactivation adjective check list (ADACL, see Appendix C) by Thayer ( 1967 , 1986 ) was used. This checklist was translated to Dutch and used in a former study by the authors (Van Brussel et al, 2021 ). It assesses core arousal or activation states based on two dimensions (activation and deactivation) and four subscales i.e., energetic, tiredness, tension, and calmness.…”

“…Learning by teaching on video has been shown to be a beneficial strategy for acquiring procedural knowledge e.g., to learn to reduce the confirmation bias through three “consider the opposite”-stages (Van Brussel et al, 2021 ), and acquiring problem-solving skills from step-based worked examples (Hoogerheide et al, 2019a ). It is an open question as to whether learning by teaching on video supports student teachers’ learning through authentic tasks such as preparing open-minded citizenship lessons.…”