Popular Education Myths: "Wag of the Finger" Installment 1

Sometimes, we as teachers look to a few sources that support a particular direction in our classrooms. But, in the social sciences, people interpret data in many ways. Sometimes, claims are based in limited data or in what Van Manen calls "habitual" practice (that is, we've always done things this way, so we continue to "reproduce" practices instead of interrogate them).

In this post, I'll briefly tackle 2 very, very popular myths in education. Keep in mind that these are not extensive lit reviews, but the sources cited are relying on meta-analysis of research. And keep in mind that research is being published daily that advances our understandings, so what you see here could be contradicted in the future. As a teacher, you need to judge the strength of claims these writers make, and compare them to other evidence and arguments availalbe to you!

THE MYTH OF LEARNING STYLES

How many times have you heard statements like, "I'm a visual learner?" How many of your education professors and instructors ask you to differentiate by learning style?

While the concept of learning styles is incredibly popular, the truth is that 40 years of research show no evidence of this concept as an effective learning strategy (Dembo & Howard, 2007; Olson, 2006; Reiner & Willingham; Scott, 2010)! While practitioners and teachers will argue vehemently that such claims are valid, researchers assert that they have "no place in eduction theory and practice that claim to be scientifically based" (Scott, 2010) and some have gone to far as to say that when teachers perpetuate the use of learning styles, it compromises our reputations as professionals.

This video summarizes a lot of the research, and makes the argument that while we should vary teaching strategies for what is best for content knowledge, the practice of classifying students by individual learning styles is simply empirically incorrect.

THE MYTH OF BRAIN-BASED LEARNING AND GENDER BRAIN DIFFERENCE

These days, many teachers are interested in brain research - but this is a field in its early states since the technology (fMRI and other imaging) is fairly new! The data, so far, have not been all that reliable.

First, there are some who argue - and even make a career of - talking about gender differences in brain physiology. There are popular books - some used as textbooks in teacher prep courses - that make such claims. But the academic world reject this - in fact, there are more similarities than differences in brains across gender! Lise Eliot (2010) sums it up really well:

"In spite of what you may have read, women do not have a larger corpus callosum,1 process language in a more symmetrical fashion, or have higher circulating levels of serotonin compared with men. The latest high-resolution MRI studies reveal small differences in brain lateralization or “sidedness” (Liu, Stufflebeam, Sepulcre, Hedden, & Buckner, 2009) and functional connectivity (Biswal et al., 2010), on the order of threetenths of a standard deviation, meaning there is more overlap between average males’ and females’ brains than differences between the average brain of each gender."

In terms of the application of brain research in general, many questions and inconsistencies remail - including a lack of research. In this video, Daniel Willingham summarizes some of the cautions - and he concludes that teachers should ignore about 95% of brain-based learning conclusions (at least based on information available at the time of writing).

Sources cited and further reading

Dembo, M.H. & Howard, K. (2007). Advice about the use of learning styles: A major myth in education. Journal of  College Reading & Learning, 37(2), 101-109.
Eliot, L. (2010). The myth of pink and blue brains. Educational Leadership, November, 32-36.
Olson, J.K. (2006). The myth of catering to learning styles. Science & Children, 44(2), 56-57.
Reiner, C. & Willingham, D. (2010). The myth of learning styles. Change, September/October, 33-35.
Scott, C. (2010). The enduring appeal of learning styles. Australian Journal of Educational Research, 54(1), 5-17.