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Category: Project

Description: When future teachers inform themselves about educational topics, they often come across diverse arguments including research-based and anecdotal evidence. In these situations, it is important to select reliable information and identify well-founded claims. While anecdotal evidence is frequently valued for its authenticity and practical implications, evidence of educational research can provide information based on systematic investigation and may therefore be more reliable in supporting claims about educational topics. Though both types of evidence are important resources to later professional practice, already pre-service teachers are shown to prefer anecdotal evidence. This study addresses pre-service teachers’ evidence evaluation and examines whether they acknowledge differences in evidential support or maintain general preferences for anecdotal evidence though it may provide insufficient support for a given claim. To control for floor and ceiling effects, we compare their evaluations with those of psychology students. Accordingly, the experiment follows a 2x3 mixed design with the between-participant factor field of study (teacher education, psychology) and within-participant factor evidence type (anecdotal, correlational, experimental): Pre-service teachers and psychology students read arguments on educational topics that are supported by either anecdotal, correlational, or experimental evidence. Participants assess their claim agreement, the convincingness of the argument and the strength of the evidential support. We expect pre-service teachers to agree more with anecdotal evidence, consider it to be more convincing and stronger evidential support than both scientific evidence and compared to psychology students. The findings contribute to recent research on pre-service teachers’ reasoning and understanding of educational research.