Learning Myths

  • Set Learning Styles

    There’s no research to support learning styles.  How to really learn : Instead match your content to the proces...

    Five Popular Myths About Learning That Are Completely Wrong

  • Rereading Material

    How to really learn: Instead of rereading, highlighting, or underlining important information, ask yourself: ‘What i...

    Five Popular Myths About Learning That Are Completely Wrong

  • Focusing On One Subject At A Time

    When it comes to learning a difficult subject, people often believe you should practice one thing at a time. How to...

    Five Popular Myths About Learning That Are Completely Wrong

  • Sticking With The First Answer

    In school, many of us were taught that if you put an answer on a test you shouldn’t change it, but you’re actually be...

    Five Popular Myths About Learning That Are Completely Wrong

  • More Time Learning For Better Understanding

    Putting in a lot of hours doesn’t always mean you’ll become good at something.  ‘People tend to be blissfully un...

    Five Popular Myths About Learning That Are Completely Wrong

  • Styles of learning

    The concept of learning styles--such as visual versus verbal or active versus reflective--is commonplace, but it turn...

    3 Common Learning Myths Debunked

  • Right brained or left brained

    Research doesn’t strongly support this concept of the lateral brain--or that people have a dominant side of the brain...

    3 Common Learning Myths Debunked

  • "Exercises" that will make you smarter

    "One minute playing Mozart will make your baby a genius, the next crosswords will fend off your mental decline"...The...

    3 Common Learning Myths Debunked

  • Re-reading and highlighting

    Both of these study strategies are relatively ineffective. Passively reading the same text over and over again won’t...

    10 Common Learning Myths That Might Be Holding You Back | InformED

  • Different learning styles

    Systematic studies of learning styles have consistently found no evidence or very weak evidence to support the idea ...

    10 Common Learning Myths That Might Be Holding You Back | InformED

  • Right or left brained

    There is no conclusive evidence that people preferentially use the left or right hemisphere. Certain functions are p...

    10 Common Learning Myths That Might Be Holding You Back | InformED

  • The 10,000 hour rule

    There’s no magic number of hours that will turn you into an expert .  A Princeton study found that delibe...

    10 Common Learning Myths That Might Be Holding You Back | InformED

  • Sticking with your first answer

    One study found that 75 % of college students and 55 % of instructors believe that changing their initial answer woul...

    10 Common Learning Myths That Might Be Holding You Back | InformED

  • Intelligence as fixed at birth

    A growing body of research shows that our IQ can increase over time , and in fact, research on growth mindset by Stan...

    10 Common Learning Myths That Might Be Holding You Back | InformED

  • Praising intelligence

    Research on the growth mindset by Carol Dweck found that praise can actually be counterproductive and discourage peop...

    10 Common Learning Myths That Might Be Holding You Back | InformED

  • We only use 10 % of our brain

    This theory is an urban legend. It seems to have originated from the 1930s self-help book “How to Win Friends and In...

    10 Common Learning Myths That Might Be Holding You Back | InformED

  • The learning pyramid

    The theory says that people remember 10 % of what they read, 20 % of what they hear, 30 % of what they see, 50 % of w...

    10 Common Learning Myths That Might Be Holding You Back | InformED

  • Shortcuts to better learning

    Despite all the learning fads that have come and gone, from mindfulness to brain training games and exercises, learni...

    10 Common Learning Myths That Might Be Holding You Back | InformED

  • The critical window of childhood

    The assumption that in the first years of life the vast majority of the brain’s development occurs, and after this p...

    How to separate learning myths from reality

  • The idle-brain theory

    Irrespective of what a person is doing, the entire brain is generally active and that, depending on the task, some ar...

    How to separate learning myths from reality

  • The left/right brain hypothesis

    The theory that most people are either dominantly analytical (and left brained) or more creative (and right brained) ...

    How to separate learning myths from reality