Best Practice? Advice Provided to Teachers about the Use of Brain Gym in Australian Schools

Audit of internet sites including state department of education sites

Australian school teachers and the agencies advising them

Not a test of Brain Gym but an audit of the ADVICE system - what education departments and professional-development providers tell teachers. Valuable because it isolates the transmission mechanism: the fad persists not because teachers misread the evidence but because the bodies charged with promoting research-based practice actively endorse it.

Perceptual-motor programmes continue in Australian schools despite evidence that they do not influence academic learning. There is little evidence for Brain Gym's claimed benefits and its theoretical underpinning has been criticised by neuroscientists - yet education departments and other bodies responsible for advice and professional development, while espousing research-based practice, continue to endorse and support its use.

Not applicable; the outcome is institutional advice.