Myths Come From Values, Not From Ignorance
by w3bd0gNovember 19th, 2012
Today’s guest post is by Cedar Reiner, assistant professor of Psychology at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. It originally appeared at Cedar’s Digest, Reiner’s blog about “education reform, college teaching, history and philosophy of science” and other subjects.
Like many interested in how we apply basic cognitive science to education, I was interested in the recent finding that many teachers still endorse many myths and misconceptions about neuroscience and cognitive psychology. Here is the original paper, and an excellent op-ed by Chris Chabris and Dan Simons in the Wall Street Journal. One interesting element of the experiment was that teachers who knew the most were also the most misinformed (from Chabris and Simons):
Ironically, in the Dekker group’s study, the teachers who knew the most about neuroscience also believed in the most myths. Apparently, teachers