Effectiveness of refutational teaching for high- and low-achieving students

Abstract

We assessed the effectiveness of refutational readings and lecture on decreasing psychological misconceptions for students of high versus low levels of achievement.During the course of a semester we addressed introductory psychology students' misconceptions with refutational readings, refutational lecture, or not at all.From pre-and post-test measures of student misconceptions, we calculated gain scores and from first semester GPA we identified students' achievement levels.High-achieving students had fewer misconceptions after completing refutational readings, or after hearing the refutational lecture.Lowachieving students, however, had fewer misconceptions only after hearing the refutational lecture.We conclude that students who are lower achievers in college may need more than just refutational readings to change misconceptions.