Working with What is Brought: Promoting Conceptual Change in a Course on Learning

Courses in teacher education programs are unique in that its structure sends messages to students about the nature of knowing and learning. Particularly, it is imperative that teacher educators structure their classes in a way that allow students to come away with a wider repertoire of epistemological beliefs about teaching and learning. Using Patrick and Pintrich's (2001) model of conceptual change, we examined a redesign of one of two sections of a large educational psychology course during autumn of 2013. The redesign of the course moved the lectures online where students can explore their understanding by taking self-assessments and making contributions to discussion boards, resulting in the freeing up of class time to allow for a broader array of active learning strategies (e.g., case study analysis) in order to identify and challenge students' epistemological beliefs, promote a deeper conceptual understanding of the material, and a greater exploration of what it means in their own classrooms. Results indicate that students engaging with the course congruent with its intended design experienced increased learning.