Background: Common cold misconceptions may contribute to ill-informed decisions and recommendations made by K-12 educators who often encounter infected students. Understanding the structure of educators' misconceptions can be used to improve health instruction in teacher professional preparation programs. Purpose: The purposes of this project were to (1) identify prevalent common cold misconceptions held by preservice educators and (2) test the effectiveness of a refutational text meant to promote the adoption of scienti?cally appropriate common cold conceptions. Study 1: An assessment concerning the common cold was completed by 44 preservice teachers. Misconceptions, such as cold weather triggering the common cold, were prevalent. Study 2: A total of 86 participants completed the same assessment as used in study 1 before and after reading a common cold refutational text. Participants demonstrated gains in scienti?cally appropriate common cold conceptions. Discussion: Identifying common cold misconceptions among preservice teachers can be used to build instructional materials (i.e., refutational text). Translation to Health Education Practice: Teacher preparation programs and health educators may ?nd it useful to identify common cold misconceptions prior to instruction as a way of con?rming the underlying structure of their students' misconceptions and utilize refutational texts to facilitate reconstruction of students' common cold conceptions. (Contains 3 tables.)