What Misconceptions do Preservice Teachers Hold About Core Educational Topics? Development and Psychometric Analysis of the Questionable Beliefs in Education Inventory (QUEBEC)

Students in teacher education and other educationally relevant disciplines frequently have questionable or false beliefs about school-related topics. Such home-grown and deeply rooted misconceptions may interfere with learning research-based knowledge at university. The present paper delivers results from a first psychometric evaluation of the Questionable Beliefs in Education scale that assesses misconceptions regarding four exemplary educational topics (i. e., effects of class size, grade retention, direct instruction, feminization of elementary/primary education). Data were gathered from N=217 students from different disciplines. Results of factor analyses conformed to the scale's four-dimensional topic-related structure. Preservice teachers endorsed misconceptions related to direct instruction to a lesser degree and misconceptions related to grade retention more strongly than educational science and psychology students. As compared to students from non-educational domains, preservice teachers agreed less with misconceptions about class size and direct instruction.