By Aaron S. Richmond, Hannah M. Rauer, and Eric Klein

Metropolitan State University of Denver

Have you heard students say, “We only use 10% of our brain!” or “MMR shots cause Autism” or “My cousin has ESP…no seriously!” or “I am really good at multi-tasking.” or “I have high bodily-kinesthetic intelligence!”? Sadly, the list can go on, and on, and on. Our students, and the general public for that matter, have many misconceptions and preformed inaccurate naïve theories of the world which often impairs learning in the classroom (Dochy et al., 1999). These misconceptions are pervasive and extremely hard to change (Lilienfeld et al., 2009). Our research suggests that metacognition may be the key to understanding misconceptions.

My undergraduate students and I sought to understand the role metacognition could play in the susceptibility to common psychology and education misconceptions. Prior to our study, most research in this area focused on the persistence of misconceptions (e.g., Kowalski & Taylor, 2009), or how they relate to critical thinking skills (Taylor & Kowalski, 2004), or how to reduce misconceptions by direct instruction (e.g., Glass et al., 2008). However, our study was the first to investigate how metacognitive beliefs (e.g., metacognitive awareness, need for cognition, cognitive and learning strategy use, or actual metacognitive performance) may predict prevalence of psychological and educational misconceptions.

We gave over 300 undergraduate freshman a 65-item psychological and educational misconceptions inventory that were pooled from several studies (e.g., Amsel et al., 2009; Standing & Huber, 2003). We assessed metacognitive beliefs using the Need for Cognition Scale (NCS; Cacioppo, Petty, Feinstein, & Jarvis, 1996), the Memory for Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (MSEQ; Berry, West, & Dennehy, 1989), the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI; Schraw & Dennison, 1994), the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ; Pintrich, Smith, Garcia, & McKeachie, 1991), and one direct measure of metacognition, calibration. Calibration is the degree to which learners understand what they know and what they do not know.

We found that metacognitive variables were highly predictive of student’s susceptibility to believing in educational and psychological misconceptions. Interestingly, the most powerful predictor was the student’s actual measure of metacognition (e.g., calibration as measured through gamma). Meaning, the more accurate students were at knowing when they knew or did not know something (i.e., calibration), the less they believed in misconceptions. Also, when students had higher scores on need for cognition, had more advanced beliefs on how to regulate cognition, stronger self-efficacy for learning preferences and control of learning beliefs, the less susceptible they were to believing in misconceptions.

What does this research tell us? We think that this is the first step in understanding the role metacognition has in conceptual development (both inaccurate and accurate). Second, if teachers stress the importance of metacognitive development and teach how to improve student metacognition, then one of the added benefits maybe that students will have more accurate conceptual development. The natural progression in this research is to experimentally manipulate metacognitive instruction and see if it reduces educational and psychological misconceptions.

References

Amsel, E., Johnston, A., Alvarado, E., Kettering, J., Rankin, L., & Ward, M. (2009). The effect of perspective on misconceptions in psychology: A test of conceptual change theory. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 36(4), 289-295.

Berry, J. M., West, R. L. & Dennehey, D. M. (1989). Reliability and validity of the Memory Self-Efficacy Questionnaire. Developmental Psychology, 25(5), 701-713. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.25.5.701

Kowalski, P., & Taylor, A. K. (2009). The effect of refuting misconceptions in the introductory psychology class. Teaching of Psychology, 36(3), 153-159. doi:10.1080/00986280902959986

Pintrich, P. R., Smith. D. A., Garcia, T., & McKeachie. W. (1991) A manual for the use of the motivated strategies for learning questionnaire. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan.

Schraw, G., & Dennison, R. S. (1994). Assessing metacognitive awareness. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 19(4), 460-475. doi:10.1006/ceps.1994.1033

Standing, L. G., & Huber, H. (2003). Do psychology courses reduce beliefs in psychological myths? Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal, 31(6), 585-585. doi:10.2224/sbp.2003.31.6.585

Taylor, A. K., & Kowalski, P. (2004). Naïve psychological science: The prevalence, strength, and sources of misconceptions. The Psychological Record, 54(1), 15-25.