by Cody Holt | Dec 11, 2015
Theory: The Left Half of the Brain Is Analytical; the Right Half Is Creative
Compiled by Lori Gracey | Excutive Director | TCEA.org
Summary of the Belief: This is the idea that the left side of the brain is “rational” and the right side “creative” and that individuals have a built-in preference for which side they routinely use.
Points About the Belief:
- The concept of different and independent halves of the brain originated during the nineteenth century when doctors discovered that if one side of the brain was damaged, certain functions would disappear.
- It is true that the two halves are different, and that the majority of people do use the left half for most aspects of language while using the right side for more specialized spatial skills.
- Current research seems to state that, if someone needs to approach a problem creatively, he uses his whole brain.
Resources:
Your Analysis:
Is the theory:
- Myth
- Unproven
- Based on truth
What This Should Mean to Teachers:
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by Cody Holt | Dec 10, 2015
Theory: Movement Helps People Learn Better
Compiled by Lori Gracey | Excutive Director | TCEA.org
Summary of the Belief: Physical activity improves academic achievement.
Points about the Belief:
- Physical activity has been found to generate positive structural changes in the brain, such as development of nerves, formation and differentiation of blood vessels, and improve connectivity.
Resources:
- Developmental psychologist John Best carried out an experiment to investigate the influence of “exergames” on the brain. He asked 33 children to take part in games that differed in their levels of physical activity and cognitive engagement (the intellectual challenge of the game). He examined the effect of these games on the executive functions – the higher control functions – of the participants’ brains. The results showed that the level of cognitive engagement had no effect, but that the level of physical activity did. Children were able to solve problems more quickly after playing a physical game than a cognitive game. He concluded that children “learn” more (in the sense of using the higher part of their brain more effectively) from exergaming than from, say, watching an educational video.
- Gao and Mandryk found acute cognitive benefits of even a casual exergame (10 minutes of light exercise) over watching the same game but not exercising on cognitive tests requiring focus and concentration in adults.
- Maillot, Perrot, and Hartley found that exergaming significantly improved cognitive measures of executive control and processing speed functions in older adults.
- Brain Gym: Building Stronger Brains or Wishful Thinking?
Your Analysis:
Is the theory:
- Myth
- Unproven
- Based on truth
What This Should Mean to Teachers:
Complete this form to finish today’s challenge.
by Cody Holt | Dec 9, 2015
Theory: People Have Different Styles of Learning
Compiled by Lori Gracey | Excutive Director | TCEA.org
Summary of the Belief: People are all different and so we all learn differently. This is a truism that is hard to deny. Because of this, for many teachers it feels intuitively right to say that there are people who prefer to learn visually, while others prefer to learn auditively, and yet others kinesthetically. Some prefer to use the Kolb inventory based on experiential learning.
Points About the Belief:
- There is a great difference between the way that someone says he or she prefers to learn and that which actually leads to better learning. (Similar to food, I may prefer to eat chocolate and donuts all the time, but that is not what is best for me.)
- Most so-called learning styles are based on types: they classify people into distinct groups. However, the assumption that people cluster into distinct groups receives very little support form objective studies.
- Most people do not fit one particular style.
- The information used to assign people to styles is often inadequate (self-reporting).
- There are so many different styles that it becomes cumbersome to link particular learners to particular styles.
Resources:
Your Analysis:
Is the theory:
- Myth
- Unproven
- Based on truth
What This Should Mean to Teachers:
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by Cody Holt | Dec 8, 2015
Theory: The Internet Makes Us Dumber
Compiled by Lori Gracey | Excutive Director | TCEA.org
Summary of the Belief: In recent years, a number of authors and neurologists have agreed that we are all becoming more stupid because of the technology we are using. Often referring to the plasticity of the brain, they argue that the Internet is rewiring our brains and this is bad.
Points About the Belief:
- It is certainly true that the Flynn effect has come to a halt in some countries. The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in intelligence test scores measured in many parts of the world from roughly 1930 to the present day. The reasons for this halt, however, are neither uniform nor clear.
- Betsy Sparrow, a professor at Columbia University has described the “Google effect.” She discovered that students remember information more easily if they think that this information is not likely to be available on the Internet. Her study also revealed that students are better able to remember where to find something on the Internet than they are at remembering the information itself.
- Along with this is the belief from the 1960s that media of all kinds are shrinking the attention span of children.
Resources:
Your Analysis:
Is the theory:
- Myth
- Unproven
- Based on truth
What This Should Mean to Teachers:
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by Cody Holt | Dec 7, 2015
Theory: In Education, You Need to Take Account of Different Types of Intelligence
Compiled by Lori Gracey | Excutive Director | TCEA.org
Summary of the Belief: According to Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences first launched in 1983, people possess the ability to process information through different intelligences, with these different intelligences being represented in different parts of the brain.
Points About the Belief:
- Gardner himself said “A myth that irritates me is that people place my intelligences on the same footing as learning styles. Learning styles say something about how people approach everything they do. … My own research and observations lead me to suspect that this is a wrong assumption. If we are talking about multiple intelligences, we mean that we react individually in different ways to different types of content, such as language, music, or other people. This is something completely different from a learning style.”
- From cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham: “Why are we referring to musical, athletic, and interpersonal skills as intelligences. … Great intelligence researchers – Cyril Burt, Raymond Cattell, Louis Thurstone – discussed many human abilities. The difference was that they called them talents or abilities, whereas Gardner has renamed them intelligences.”
- Gardiner makes it impossible to validate these since measurement requires clearly defined components for the intelligences, but he has stated that he will not define such components.
- Another problem is that research has shown that many of the categories of intelligence that Gardner differentiates correlate very highly with each other and thus cannot really be considered to be separate intelligences.
Resources:
Your Analysis:
Is the theory:
- Myth
- Unproven
- Based on truth
What This Should Mean to Teachers:
Complete this form to finish today’s challenge.
