Investigating a Phenomenon That Stands in Contrast to Evidence-Based Teaching: Educational Psychological Misconceptions Among Preservice Teachers

This dissertation was aimed at shedding light on one phenomenon that stands in contrast to evidence-based teaching (EBT): preservice teachers’ educational psychological misconceptions. In order to achieve EBT, preservice teachers should endorse a small number of scientifically unsupported but often deeply ingrained assumptions (i.e., misconceptions), base their knowledge primarily on scientific instead of anecdotal evidence, and be able to accurately assess what they know and do not know (i.e., metacognitive monitoring accuracy). Gaining deeper insight into the prevalence and sources of as well as a reduction in educational psychological misconceptions offers the chance to support preservice teachers in overcoming their misconceptions and thus enables preservice teachers to become teachers who act in accordance with calls for EBT. This dissertation presents findings about psychological misconceptions, why they should be combatted, where they come from, and how to reduce them in order to foster EBT. In Paper 1, we compared the prevalence of educational psychological misconceptions with the prevalence of general scientific misconceptions. In addition, we investigated whether preservice teachers were more likely to change their educational psychological misconceptions after reading short empirical or anecdotal refutation texts. In Paper 2, we explored the prevalence of further misconceptions and their origins. Building on the differentiation between scientific and anecdotal information, we were interested in the sources that preservice teachers use to form their beliefs and whether relying more on anecdotal information was associated with attributes that stand in contrast to EBT (e.g., endorsing more misconceptions). In Paper 3, we investigated different approaches that could be applied to reduce educational psychological misconceptions and enhance metacognitive monitoring accuracy (persistently) in real-life settings (i.e., standard lectures, refutation lectures, instruction in information evaluation strategies). I discuss the presented findings critically with regard to EBT and outline practical implications as well as open questions for further research