Neuromyths in Education

Question: What two things do these three statements have in common?

A. Individuals learn better when they receive information in their preferred learning style (for example, visual, auditory or kinaesthetic).

B. Short bouts of co‐ordination exercises can improve integration of left and right hemispheric brain function.

C. Differences in hemispheric dominance (left brain or right brain) can help to explain individual differences amongst learners.

Answer:

1. They are all false.
2. They are all believed to be true by around 90% of UK teachers.

Interested? You can read more in Paul Howard-Jones’s 2014 paper ‘Neuroscience and education: myths and messages‘ or in Pete Etchells’s summary of Howard-Jones’s research, ‘Brain balony has no place in the classroom’.