Neuromyths in Education: Prevalence and Predictors of Misconceptions among Teachers

242 primary and secondary teachers (137 from the Dorset region, UK; 105 from regions around Amsterdam, NL); mean age 43 (SD 11.0); 44% primary, 50% secondary, 6% other

Teachers with a self-selected interest in the neuroscience of learning (93% said they were interested in brain science and 90% thought it valuable for their practice)

Cross-sectional online survey of 32 statements about the brain, 15 of them neuromyths, answered "correct"/"incorrect"/"do not know"; 15-minute completion. Recorded with type 'review' because the controlled vocabulary has no survey category; it is not an intervention study and carries no causal weight about child outcomes. Sample is self-selected toward teachers enthusiastic about neuroscience, which the authors argue should if anything make 49% a FLOOR - "teachers who are less interested in brain research may believe even more myths". Note the tension in that argument: the paper's own regression found MORE brain knowledge predicting MORE myth belief, which would push the other way. The predictor models are weak - the myth model explains R-squared = 0.089 of variance, F(8, 210) = 2.463, p = .014 - so the predictor findings are much thinner than the prevalence counts.

Teachers endorsed 49% of neuromyths on average while answering ~70% of general brain-knowledge items correctly (NL 73%, UK 67%; the country difference was significant, t(240) = -3.09, p = .002, but overall myth endorsement did not differ by country). Seven of the 15 myths were believed by more than half of teachers. Myths tied to commercial educational programmes were the most widely believed - the learning-styles matching myth was the single most endorsed statement of all. Teachers also endorsed the TRUE companion claim that learners show modality preferences (95% UK / 82% NL correct), so the error is specifically about matching, not about preferences existing. Strikingly, MORE general brain knowledge predicted GREATER belief in neuromyths (B = 0.240, SE 0.071, beta = 0.24, t = 3.39, p = .001) - general neuroscience literacy does not inoculate against pseudoscience, and this reverses Howard-Jones et al. (2009). No other predictor (country, sex, age, school type, reading popular science, reading scientific journals, in-service training) was significant. Reported exposure differed sharply by country - Brain Gym encountered in school by 82% of UK vs 8% of NL teachers, learning styles by 98% vs 64%, left/right-brain learners by 44% vs 18%. Teachers attributed only 22% (UK) and 34% (NL) of learning to genes.

Not applicable; outcome is teacher belief.

The prevalence finding is one of the most replicated results in this literature. Newton & Salvi (2020) systematically reviewed 37 studies, 15,405 educators, 18 countries and found 89% endorsement of the matching claim with no decline over a decade; Ferrero et al. (2016) replicated the neuromyth survey in Spain, Gleichgerrcht et al. (2015) in Latin America, Macdonald et al. (2017) in the US. THE SECOND FINDING DOES NOT REPLICATE and the record should not pretend otherwise: the positive association between general brain knowledge and myth belief REVERSES the earlier result of Howard-Jones et al. (2009), who found a protective effect of knowledge in trainee teachers - a contradiction the authors state in their own discussion.