VCU news

By VCU News staff

cRam Session is a VCU News feature that highlights the breadth of offerings in the VCU Bulletin course catalog and the wide-ranging expertise of the instructors. Research associate professor Elizabeth Edmondson, Ph.D., and curriculum specialist Suzanne Kirk are with the Department of Teaching and Learning in VCU’s School of Education. They share quick insight from their course Debunking Classroom Myths: How and Why Do We Learn Ideas Incorrectly?

Tell us something surprising or truly notable about your course’s subject.

Many people are confident that they have no misconceptions, or that misconceptions are trivial and do not really impact everyday life. But misconceptions are ubiquitous – everyone has them – and often, they impact us in unexpected ways.

What causes the seasons? Do carrots improve our eyesight? People’s beliefs can vary, and misconceptions can be formed in many ways: a misheard statement in a class, a children’s book that oversimplifies a concept, mythology and cultural traditions that provide imaginative but incomplete explanations. Misconceptions exist in all fields and are very hard to debunk.

Before a person is willing to accept a new, more correct concept, they must first become dissatisfied with their previous understanding. If they are not willing to consider that their initial idea is a misconception, they will not be open to correcting their ideas. In our class, we talk about common misconceptions in a wide range of areas. We then investigate how people learn – and what techniques and teaching strategies can help them understand correct conceptions.

What is your favorite assignment you have students do?

We both love the midterm group project and the final individual projects. Students choose a misconception for each project, research why it exists and outline what the accurate conception is.

For the group project, students create a short questionnaire to investigate their friends’ and families’ belief in the misconception, where they think they learned it and how willing they are to change their beliefs about the topic. For the final projects, students create a presentation or infographic to help explain and debunk a misconception that interests them.

The goal is to use the ideas and teaching strategies that they learn in class to help others better understand the facts around a misconception. Over the years, projects have included a wide range of topics, including heavy-metal vocals and screaming, witch trials, helping preschoolers cope with grief – and even if goldfish really have a three-minute memory. Every class is different and fascinating because students bring their passion to the projects.

How does an element of this subject intersect intriguingly with a different field?

One topic we discuss in class is health inequities and social determinants of health. There is a common misconception that people with darker skin are less likely to develop skin cancer, and in class, we learn that melanin does provide protection from ultraviolet radiation and can protect against melanoma. But when we look at the medical data, we find that people with darker skin are more likely to have more advanced stages of skin cancer and to die from it.

The misconception may lead darker-skinned people to be more lax in using sunscreen, but the bigger issue is that many of the illustrations used to help recognize melanoma use light-skinned subjects. Because of this, melanoma is often not identified in the early, more curable stages. Medical practitioners and researchers are working to address this example of health inequities.