Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
Monthly Ed Tips October 2021 - Teaching Neuromyths
Certain widely-shared teaching myths about education are destructive for all of us as educators, and destructive for our educational institutions. After reading each statement below, label it myth or fact.
1. Students can learn something without actively paying attention to it.
2. We only use 10% of our brains.
3. Understanding students’ learning styles can help us teach them.
4. Physical activities that cross the midline of the brain, such as Brain Gym, help students learn better through integration of the left and right brain.
5. Some people are more left-brained and some are more right-brained.
6. Male and female brains are different and we should adjust our teaching accordingly.
7. It is helpful to examine which of the “multiple intelligences” students have.
8. The more dendrites children grow, the better.
Teaching neuromyths have existed through the years. Ten to fifteen years ago, much of the information about the brain was the result of research on mice and rats or extrapolated from unrelated research. Some people made some unfounded leaps and developed indefensible ideas about how the brain learns based on this information.
Earlier, there was not much research into understanding what the brain was doing during learning situations. Based on research using brain imagining, we now have a great deal of research and we can make some credible statements of what happens when the brain is learning.
These are all Myths!
Let’s explore each teaching neuromyth and find out what’s really true since there’s always some kernel of truth somewhere.
1. Students can learn something without actively paying attention to it.
Maria Montessori, the Italian educator and originator of the educational system that bears her name, The Montessori System, said, “If we can control the attention of the child, we solve the problems of education.”
The great Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh said this on the power of our awareness, “The greatest gift you can give another person is your attention.”
It cannot be debated that attention drives learning. Attention is how the brain allocates its resources.
To fully understand the concept of attention, it is instructive to focus on “selective attention,” i.e., students selectively focusing on information the educator wants them to comprehend and not on various distracting influencers whether in the classroom or in their lives.
For example, when you say, “pay attention” to students, does it mean for them to take in more information? No, it means for them to take in less information, namely the information you want them to learn. In other words, you are asking them to ignore the information their brains are receiving from the entire classroom environment and instead “selectively” focus on the information you are presenting.
An everyday example of selective attention occurs when a person watches television and notices nothing else or a teenager completely engrossed in video games while being obvious to the outside world.
An analogy to consider attention as a spotlight rather than a floodlight, where the spotlight is focused on the intended material presented by the teacher and the “floodlight” is all of the extra distracting and conflicting stimuli occurring around the student.
Helpful examples of selective attention on You Tube are The Gorilla video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo and the Stroop Test https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zve9xMp94UU
2. We only use 10% of our brains.
It’s one of Hollywood’s favorite bits of pseudoscience: human beings use only 10 percent of their brain, and awakening the remaining 90 percent—supposedly dormant—allows otherwise ordinary human beings to display extraordinary mental abilities. In Phenomenon (1996), John Travolta gains the ability to predict earthquakes and instantly learns foreign languages. Scarlett Johansson becomes a super powered martial-arts master in Lucy (2014), and in Limitless (2011) Bradley Cooper writes a novel overnight.
This myth started a long-time ago. Today neuroimaging enables us to look inside the brain and this has proven to be false. This idea is popular among the ESP population and is used to explain the existence of their abilities.
The myth that we only use 10% of our brains is at times ascribed to Dale Carnegie who in the 1940s sold self-help books. He attributed the idea to the founder of modern psychology, William James. But nothing in James’ writings and speeches supports this claim.
But the truth is that we use all of our brain all of the time.
How do we know? For one thing, if we needed only 10 percent of our brain, the majority of brain injuries would have no discernible consequences, since the damage would affect parts of the brain that weren’t doing anything to begin with.
In fact, our brains are more active in sleep than during waking hours and even in a resting state the brain is quite active.
3. Understanding a student’s learning styles can help us teach them.
Congratulations to the teachers who were early adopters of learning styles because they realized that students do learn differently. I was one of them. This was before researchers could look inside students’ brains with neuroimaging as they were doing math and reading and realized there is no scientific evidence to support this theory. The brain is not that simple. Students may have preferences but there is simply too much interconnectivity in the brain to support this theory.
Teachers do want to offer multiple pathways of learning when presenting material, working with material, and assessment. But it goes beyond visual, auditory, and kinetic pathways. We want to bring all the pathways into every lesson. When you label, you limit.
For more insight into this topic, I suggest reading question 7 examining multiple intelligences.
4. Physical activities that cross the midline of the brain, such as Brain Gym and Brain IQ, help students learn better through integration of the left and right brain.
There is no evidence that supports this theory. For example, doing Brain Gym’s exercises such as lazy eights, neck circles, or ankle touches has demonstrated no effect on learning.
However, There is a preponderance of evidence that especially aerobic exercise, even for a few minutes, improves learning.
Meta-analysis of 44 studies found that even a small amount of exercise raises IQ, achievement, and math test scores and improves short and long-term memory. For more research on the topic of how exercise improves learning, explore the exceptional and extensive research of Harvard Medical School professor John Ratey http://www.johnratey.com/ and read his outstanding book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.
5. Some people are more left-brained and some are more right-brained.
In reality, both sides work together, such as in reading and writing.
This myth got started in the 1960s when Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga were the first to study split brains in humans. They tried to stop epileptic seizures by cutting the corpus callosum that links the right and left hemispheres, and found that several patients who had undergone a complete callosotomy suffered from split-brain syndrome. That is, they observed some lateralization (division of tasks) in right and left brain functioning.
In patients with split-brain syndrome, the right hemisphere, which controls the left hand and foot, acts independently of the left hemisphere and the person’s ability to make rational decisions. This can give rise to a kind of split personality, in which the left hemisphere gives orders that reflect the person’s rational goals, whereas the right hemisphere issues conflicting demands that reveal hidden desires.
In reality, each hemisphere is specialized but interactive with the other hemisphere. It has been established that the right hemisphere specializes in the prosody and emotional aspects of language, holistic perception, non-verbal skills, and left-side visual and motor skills. The left hemisphere is responsible for most language aspects, verbal abilities, detail perception, right-side vision, and right-side motor skills.
6. Male and female brains are different and we should adjust our teaching accordingly.
In fact, they are far more similar than different. All of us are a blend of male and female characteristics, some more and some less. Students shouldn’t be taught in different ways. When you label, you limit. Educators should offer diverse teaching strategies to reach as many students as possible.
7. It is helpful to examine which of the “multiple intelligences” students have.
The fields of psychology and education were revolutionized 37 years ago when the now world-renowned psychologist Howard Gardner published his 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, which detailed a new model of human intelligence that went beyond the traditional view that there was a single kind that could be measured by standardized tests.
The theory became highly popular with K-12 educators around the world seeking ways to reach students who did not respond to traditional approaches. But over time, MI somehow became synonymous with the concept of “learning styles”.
Gardner strongly believes we “all have jagged profiles, all have our strengths and needs, good in some areas and not so good in other ways.” Gardner believes there is no neuroscience research to support his multiple intelligences theory. Gardner explains that people have certain skills, preferences, and interest and advises teachers to offer as many activities as possible to involve as many skills as possible.
Howard Gardner in speaking on the use of “multiple intelligences” in education says: “I have been gratified by the interest shown in this idea and the ways it’s been used in school, museums, and businesses around the world. But one unanticipated consequence has driven me to distraction-and that’s the tendency of many people to credit me with the notion of ‘learning styles’ or to collapse ‘multiple intelligences’ with learning styles.” It’s high time to relieve my pain and to set the record straight.”
He continues, “Even before I spoke and wrote about “MI”, the term “learning styles” was being bandied about in educational circles. The idea, reasonable enough on the surface, is that all children (indeed, all of us) have distinct minds and personalities. Accordingly, it makes sense to find out about learners and to teach and nurture them in ways that are appropriate, that they value, and-above all-that are effective.”
Gardner says there are two problems when speaking of learning styles. “First, the notion of “learning styles” is itself not coherent. Those who use this term do not define the criteria for a style, nor where styles come from, how they are recognized/assessed/exploited.
The other problem is when researchers have tried to identify learning styles, teach consistently with those styles, and examine outcomes, there is not persuasive evidence that the learning style analysis produces more effective outcomes than a “one size fits all approach.” Absences of evidence do not prove non-existence of a phenomenon; it signals to educational researchers: “’back to the drawing boards.’”
He posits that “sometimes people speak about a “visual” learner or an “auditory” learner. The implication is that some people learn through their eyes, others through their ears. This notion is incoherent. Both spatial information and reading occur with the eyes, but they use entirely different cognitive facilities. Similarly, both music and speaking activate the ears, but again these are entirely different cognitive facilities. Recognizing this fact, the concept of intelligence does not focus on how linguistic or spatial information reaches the brain via eyes, ears, hands, it doesn’t matter. What matters is the power of the mental computer, the intelligence that acts upon that sensory information, once picked up.
In contrast, there is strong evidence that human beings have a range of intelligences and that strengths (or weaknesses) in one intelligence does not predict strengths (or weaknesses) in any other intelligences. All of us exhibit jagged profiles of intelligences.”
Finally, Gardner has “three primary lessons for educators:
~ “Individualize your teaching as much as possible. Instead of “one size fits all,” learn as much as you can about each student, and teach each person in ways that you find are comfortable and effective.
~ Pluralize your teaching: Teach important material in several ways, not just one (e.g., through stories, works of art, diagrams, role play).
~ Drop the term styles. It will confuse others and it won’t help either you or your students.”
8. The more dendrites children grow, the better.
The brain becomes more efficient and mature as it goes through periods of growth (plasticity) and consolidation (pruning).
According to Alison Gopnik, the adult brain has about 100 billion nerve cells or neurons, about the same number of stars in our Milky Way. In her outstanding book Scientist in the Crib, she writes that a baby’s brain has most of the neurons it will ever need, and the number of neurons remain very nearly the same from the time we are born until we’re well past 65.
However, the newborn baby’s brain weighs about ¾ of a pound (.75/pound), only a quarter as much as the adult brain (3 lbs.). What causes the weight change? The answer is the wiring, the intricate network of connections between cells.
Gopnik states that at birth, each neuron in the cerebral cortex has around 2,500 connections and the number of connections reaches its peak at ages 2 to 3 with 15,000 synapses/neurons which is many more than in the adult brain. Preschool children have brains that are literally more active, more connected, and much more flexible than adults are. She calls them “alien geniuses”.
Brains make more connections than they need. In order to control this process and become more efficient in responding to its environment, the brain undergoes a process called pruning. Pruning is similar to pruning a fruit tree or pinching a geranium plant, where stopping the growth in some branches strengths the growth in other branches and changes the whole design of the plant. The synapses that carry the most messages get stronger and survive, while the weaker synaptic connections are cut out. Experience determines which connections will be strengthened and which will be pruned, whereby connections that have been activated most frequently are preserved. Very active pruning occurs between ages 10 and puberty.
The process of connections and pruning which allows the brain to adapt to its surroundings is termed plasticity, and is a very good thing since it allows the human brain to be finely attuned to its particular environment. That’s how our ancestors could survive in the savanna as well as the jungle, how we survive in our modern world and our office cubicles, and how our children and grandchildren will be able to survive in outer space.