Learning Myths That Refuse to Die
Learning myths debunked: Learning styles have no evidence, 10% brain myth is false, you use all of it, left-brain/right-brain is oversimplified.
What was corrected
The article attributed a specific 900-teacher survey with particular belief percentages to a single Paul Howard-Jones study, when the real 2014 paper actually synthesizes several separate studies and reports different percentage ranges than those cited. It described a real 2012 study's sample as 242 British teachers, when the actual sample combined UK and Netherlands teachers. It cited an unconfirmed figure for how many people have taken the VARK learning styles questionnaire. It placed researcher Stephan Lewandowsky at the University of Bristol for a 2012 paper, when he was actually at the University of Western Australia at that time. It attributed specific reversion percentages (27 percent, 37 percent, 14 percent) to a 2011 study by Andrew Butler that could not be located in his published work. It also presented a paraphrased idea from John Dunlosky as a direct quotation that could not be verified verbatim.
The article now accurately describes the Howard-Jones 2014 paper as synthesizing multiple studies with the real percentage ranges, correctly describes the 2012 neuromyth study's UK and Netherlands sample, hedges the VARK administration figure, corrects Lewandowsky's 2012 affiliation and adds his real co-authors, generalizes the Butler debunking research to its well-supported underlying principle without the unconfirmed percentages, and converts the Dunlosky quotation to an accurate paraphrase.
Why this is better
Web searches confirmed that the article's core, extensively cited research on learning myths was accurate and well documented throughout. Two later sections covering neuromyth prevalence surveys and debunking research contained a mischaracterized study, incorrect statistics, an incorrect researcher affiliation, and an unverifiable direct quotation, which have been corrected to reflect the real, verifiable source material.
More by Emir Baycan in Concepts
- Correction First Principles Thinking: Elon Musk's Approach Explained
- Correction Nine Methods to Learn Anything Faster and Effectively
- Correction The Limits of Rules
- Correction Why Most Learning Fails