Some widely held ideas about the way children learn can lead to educators and parents to adopt faulty teaching principles.
Myth #1: Humans use only 10% of their brain.
Fact #1: The 10% myth is mere urban legend. In the classroom, teachers may entreat students to try harder, but doing so will not light up "unused" neural circuits, academic achievement dose not improve by simply turning up a neural volume switch.
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Myth #2: Left brain and right brain people differ.
Fact #2: The contention that we have a rational left brain and an intuitive right brain is fiction. Humans use both hemispheres of their brain for all cognitive functions. The left brain/right brain notion originated from the realization that many people process language more in the left hemisphere and spatial abilities and emotional expression more in the right hemisphere. Psychologists have used the idea to explain distinctions between different personality types. In education, programs emerged that advocated less reliance on rational "left brain" activities. Brain-imaging studies have shown no evidence of the right hemisphere as a locus of creativity. The brain recruits both left and right sides for reading and math.
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Myth #3: You must speak one language before learning another.
Fact #3: Children who learn English at the same time as they learn French do not confuse one language with the other and so develop more slowly. The idea of interfering languages suggests that different areas of the brain compete for resources. In reality, young children who learn two languages, even at the same time, gain better generalized knowledge of language structure as a whole.
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Myth #4: Brains of males and females differ in ways that dictate learning abilities.
Fact #4: Differences do exist in the brains of males and females, and the distinctive psychology may result in differences in the way their brains function. No research, though, has demonstrated gender-specific differences in how networks of neurons become connected when we learn new skills. Even if some gender differences do eventually emerge, they will likely be small and based on averages, and therefore they will not be applicable to individuals.
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Myth #5: Each child has a particular learning style.
Fact #5: The notion that the student tends to learn better by favoring a particular form of sensory input, a visual learner as opposed to a kinetics learner, has not received much validation in the research.
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References:
Mind, Brain, and Education Science by Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa (2010).
Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science (2007).
Fact #1: The 10% myth is mere urban legend. In the classroom, teachers may entreat students to try harder, but doing so will not light up "unused" neural circuits, academic achievement dose not improve by simply turning up a neural volume switch.
___________________________________________________________
Myth #2: Left brain and right brain people differ.
Fact #2: The contention that we have a rational left brain and an intuitive right brain is fiction. Humans use both hemispheres of their brain for all cognitive functions. The left brain/right brain notion originated from the realization that many people process language more in the left hemisphere and spatial abilities and emotional expression more in the right hemisphere. Psychologists have used the idea to explain distinctions between different personality types. In education, programs emerged that advocated less reliance on rational "left brain" activities. Brain-imaging studies have shown no evidence of the right hemisphere as a locus of creativity. The brain recruits both left and right sides for reading and math.
___________________________________________________________
Myth #3: You must speak one language before learning another.
Fact #3: Children who learn English at the same time as they learn French do not confuse one language with the other and so develop more slowly. The idea of interfering languages suggests that different areas of the brain compete for resources. In reality, young children who learn two languages, even at the same time, gain better generalized knowledge of language structure as a whole.
___________________________________________________________
Myth #4: Brains of males and females differ in ways that dictate learning abilities.
Fact #4: Differences do exist in the brains of males and females, and the distinctive psychology may result in differences in the way their brains function. No research, though, has demonstrated gender-specific differences in how networks of neurons become connected when we learn new skills. Even if some gender differences do eventually emerge, they will likely be small and based on averages, and therefore they will not be applicable to individuals.
___________________________________________________________
Myth #5: Each child has a particular learning style.
Fact #5: The notion that the student tends to learn better by favoring a particular form of sensory input, a visual learner as opposed to a kinetics learner, has not received much validation in the research.
___________________________________________________________
References:
Mind, Brain, and Education Science by Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa (2010).
Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science (2007).
