Chapter 12 page 267
CHAPTER 12b
Belief
People Do Not Readily Change Their Beliefs
You are undoubtedly aware that people often do not change their beliefs in response to new ideas or
new evidence. Obviously, this is true about deeply held beliefs about topics such as beliefs about religion or
politics. I recall that as an undergraduate I had many fascinating, stimulating discussions with other
students about politics. All the participants in these discussions advanced their best arguments to try to
convince others that their positions were the best. But to my knowledge, no one ever made any major
changes in their beliefs as a result of their arguments. Certainly no Republicans became Democrats, and no
Democrats became Republicans. I am sure that all of us made some relatively minor modifications to our
beliefs here and there, but we all basically maintained our basic framework of beliefs about politics.
Another example of strongly held beliefs that are resistant to change are stereotypes. For example,
suppose that a person believes that lawyers are introverted, and then that person meets a number of lawyers
who are very extraverted. Do you think that the person would change her stereotype, getting rid of the idea
that lawyers are typically introverted? Social psychologists have found that stereotypes seldom change in
response to such experiences. Instead, the person might retain her belief that lawyers are introverted by
reasoning that these lawyers are just exceptions to the rule. The person might even reason that these
lawyers are exceptions that prove the rule!
Beliefs about teaching appear to be very strongly resistant to instruction. Teacher education programs
are designed to encourage teacher education students to adopt beliefs about teaching and learning that are
often very different from the beliefs that the students have when they begin their teacher education program.
Unfortunately, it appears that teacher education programs typically have only a very small effect on
changing these beliefs. For example, most teacher education programs have for many decades encouraged
teachers to ask challenging questions in class that require higher-order thinking. However, research on
teachers’ questions has continued to show that many teachers tend to ask lower level, factual questions
rather than higher-level questions that require more thinking. ##
As one more example, I recall an episode in a high school social studies class in which I was giving a
guest presentation. At one point in the presentation, I displayed a chart that showed the relationship
between growth in GNP and the proportion of GNP spent on military defense. The chart indicated that
nations that spent a smaller proportion of GNP on military defense had larger growth in GNP. One student
raised his hand and loudly asserted that he didn’t believe this chart, and he had seen a chart last week that
showed just the opposite. What this story shows is that when you, as a teacher, present evidence that
contradicts what students believe, they will try to find various ways to explain your evidence away. They
will discount your evidence.
All of these examples support the conclusion that students’ preinstructional conceptions will have
powerful effects on what they believe in your class. There is powerful research support for this conclusion.
The conclusion is certainly valid for topics such as religion, politics, and stereotypes. But the conclusion is
also valid for topics that involve less emotional or deeply held beliefs. You might think that students would
readily change beliefs about science, but scientific beliefs are also resistant to belief change. As you read
earlier in the text, many children resist changing their beliefs about the earth’s shape. Similarly, students
who think that heavy objects fall faster than light objects are not convinced when they watch a