B. Why do Neuromyths persist in schools and colleges?

Taking an in-depth look into recent years of research in neuromyths, we can affirm they exist and persist among students, teachers, coaches, educators, and head teachers. The distance between neuroscience and education is still too great. Additionally, they have difficulties in accessing to the latest findings due to the absence of scientific literature in their mother tongue or the weakness of science communication. Howard-Jones, P. A. (2014) found reasons for the lack of knowledge among educators about science and the brain.  Some of them are mentioned below:

  • Promises go along with Recommendations: interested teachers and learners often fail to consider that neurodidactics is more than just a plausible concept – it can also be a myth when applied incorrectly. For example, the promises above often go along with recommendations such as Our brain wants us to use all of it and not just a small fraction”, “Address both brain hemispheres in equal measure”, or “Pay attention to whether you are a visual, auditory or haptic learner”.
  • Recommendations go along with Neuromyths Numerous empirical studies reveal widespread endorsement of such misconceptions on the topic of learning and the brain both among the public at large and among pre-service and in-service teachers (e.g., Dekker et al., 2012Ferrero et al., 2016). Even school principals, award-winning teachers and university instructors widely endorse neuromyths like “we only use 10% of our brains”, “learning differences due to hemispheric use”, or the “existence of learning styles” (Horvath et al., 2018Zhang et al., 2019). 
  • Neuromyths go along with Educational Problems On the one hand, this is problematic because it could lead lecturers to pass on incorrect content and/or ineffective learning strategies to their students. On the other hand, it could waste the education system’s “money, time and effort” (Dekker et al., 2012, p. 1) and deprive both lecturers and learners of opportunities to expend resources on more effective theories and methods (e.g., teaching learning strategies or cognitive activation.
  • Educational Problems can addressed with Interdisciplinary Communication The study of neuromyths and how they develop may provide a valuable source of insight into the challenges of interdisciplinary communication between neuroscience and education, and into how these challenges might be addressed. Understanding the cultural distance to be travelled between neuroscience and education and the biases that distort communications along the way — may support a dispassionate assessment of the progress in developing a bridge across these diverse disciplines and of what is needed to complete it.

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