A comparative study of Polish and Israeli teachers’ attitudes toward neuromyths in education
- Institution: Levinsky College of Education, Israel
- ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9201-2188
- Institution: Maria Curie Skłodowska University of Lublin
- ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7558-7630
- Institution: Beit Berl College, The Israeli Social Enterprise Research Center (ISERC), Israel
- ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3637-6478
- Year of publication: 2024
- Source: Show
- Pages: 53-67
- DOI Address: https://doi.org/10.15804/em.2024.04.04
- PDF: em/27/em2704.pdf
Recently, there has been an intense increase in interest in brain research findings among education professionals. In response to the needs of teachers, a number of proposals have appeared on the market, which are in fact so-called neuromyths, i.e. theories or methods, with an unclear theoretical basis and unproven effectiveness. Despite this, they are widely used in many countries. The purpose of the article is to check whether the obtained results will be related to the specific socio-economic situation of a given country. The study included 171 teachers from Poland and Israel. Participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire that had already been used for this purpose in other countries. The results indicate that the factor significantly differentiating the studied groups, was the place of residence. Polish teachers scored better on questions about facts of brain structure, but were more likely to believe false claims involving eating sweet things, brain neuroplasticity or the need to drink water. Israeli teachers, on the other hand, were more likely to accept as true false claims related to bilingualism, to simultaneous stimulating both the left and right hemisphere, to giving children a lot of educational toys, doing multitasking and using media. This may be a result of socioeconomic and cultural differences, concerning, among other things, the use of scientific publications, media or university subjects.