Refuting Misconceptions in an Introductory Psychology Course for Preservice Teachers

This experimental field study (pre-post-follow-up design) with 184 student teachers examined the effectiveness of an intervention to reduce misconceptions about psychology within an introductory psychology course. For this purpose, over the course’s one-semester duration, all students attended six lectures and, in addition, worked individually on six assignments in between. In both, the intervention and control group, assignments covered the same learning content but assignments for the intervention group particularly addressed six topic-related misconceptions, and were designed to bring about conceptual change. These assignments included refutational texts and other tasks that triggered conceptual inconsistency and emphasized students’ use of scientific concepts. Students in the control group completed assignments designed for rehearsal of and elaboration on the topics at hand but were not exposed to the respective misconceptions. The findings demonstrate the efficacy of this slight modification of tasks in reducing students’ misconceptions around psychology. While the groups did not differ in exam performance, the positive associations found between exam performance and high-confidence rejection of psychological myths, and their correlation with evaluativist epistemic beliefs and critical thinking, underline the importance of early interventions in teacher education with the aim of dispelling misconceptions about psychology.