Del conocimiento científico al malentendido. Prevalencia de neuromitos en estudiantes ecuatorianos

Abstract

Objetivo: Analizar la prevalencia de neuromitos en una muestra de estudiantes ecuatorianos de carreras afines a la educación. Métodos: Se administró un cuestionario a 328 participantes con el fin de evaluar su creencia en neuromitos y conocimiento general sobre el funcionamiento cerebral. Resultados: El 97.87% de los encuestados está interesado en las neurociencias con relación al aprendizaje y el 91.16% considera que son relevantes en su quehacer profesional; no obstante, solo el 45.12% lee publicaciones periódicas al respecto y el 37.20% ha recibido instrucción formal en la temática. En promedio, los estudiantes fallaron en identificar el 56% (DT= 27%) de los neuromitos y respondieron correctamente al 54% (DT= 25%) de las interrogantes de conocimiento general, sin mostrar diferencias significativas por género. Contrario a la literatura, la edad fue el único predictor significativo de la creencia en neuromitos y el interés, la lectura y la instrucción predijeron negativamente el conocimiento general en neurociencias. Más aún, no se encontraron correlaciones significativas entre edad, creencia en neuromitos y conocimiento general en neurociencias. Los resultados obtenidos con respecto a la prevalencia de neuromitos son congruentes con investigaciones pasadas en muestras latinoamericanas y europeas. Conclusiones: Los neuromitos representan una amenaza especialmente alarmante en los países en vías de desarrollo y su estudio es esencial para el diseño de nuevas y mejores iniciativas que coadyuven a su reducción.

The Persistence of Neuromyths in the Educational Settings: A Systematic Review

“…However, the last three neuromyths described by those authors have become less common over time. Several authors (Gleichgerrcht et al, 2015 ; Ferrero et al, 2016 ; Falquez Torres and Ocampo Alvarado, 2018 ) have considered these as general knowledge about the brain. The definition of myth implies “a commonly believed but false idea” (Oxford University Press, 2010 ).…”

“…Other issues studied revealed low predictive power in items such as reading pop science or educational magazines (Ferrero et al, 2016 ; Varas-Genestier and Ferreira, 2017 ), the self-informed knowledge about the brain given by the sample (Varas-Genestier and Ferreira, 2017 ), being 1st- or 4th-year student of science (Dündar and Gündüz, 2016 ) or being older (Falquez Torres and Ocampo Alvarado, 2018 ).…”

“…In the list of factors that can protect against neuromyths, teaching in higher education is related to being more likely to believe fewer neuromyths (Macdonald et al, 2017 ), which is consistent with the worse results of preschool teachers when these have been compared (Sarrasin et al, 2019 ). Other protectors include reading journals (Dündar and Gündüz, 2016 ), specifically, scientific or peer-reviewed journals (Ferrero et al, 2016 ; Macdonald et al, 2017 ; Falquez Torres and Ocampo Alvarado, 2018 ). Additionally, education level or having more years of formal education (Fuentes and Risso, 2015 ; Falquez Torres and Ocampo Alvarado, 2018 ; Zhang et al, 2019 ) and interest (Dekker et al, 2012 ; Falquez Torres and Ocampo Alvarado, 2018 ) and courses in neuroscience (Macdonald et al, 2017 ; Ruhaak and Cook, 2018 ) are related to better scores on neuromyths.…”

“…Educators and education itself would benefit from accurate scientific content about the brain (Fuentes and Risso, 2015 ; Pei et al, 2015 ; Papadatou-Pastou et al, 2017 ). It would be a considerable achievement to transfer knowledge from the neuroscience to the teachers training (Deligiannidi and Howard-Jones, 2015 ; Karakus et al, 2015 ; Ferrero et al, 2016 ; Varas-Genestier and Ferreira, 2017 ; Falquez Torres and Ocampo Alvarado, 2018 ; Škraban et al, 2018 ). In addition, this is an opportunity to commit to lifelong learning with courses for in-service teachers because no significant differences have been found between students and professionals (Falquez Torres and Ocampo Alvarado, 2018 ) even in the case of award-winning teachers (Horvath et al, 2018 ).…”

“…The advances in neuroscience and its subfields (neuroeducation, educational neuroscience) progressed adequately, at the same time as researchers explored the educational community's knowledge in these areas. It was reported that the majority of teachers and students are interested in educational neuroscience and consider it useful in their professional work (Dekker et al, 2012;Ferrero et al, 2016;Düvel et al, 2017;Bailey et al, 2018;Falquez Torres and Ocampo Alvarado, 2018;McMahon et al, 2019;Zhang et al, 2019;among others), although a minority of teachers report currently using brain-based techniques in their classrooms (Rodrigues Rato et al, 2013) or, at least, they are eager to implement those (Zhang et al, 2019). However, neuromyths can affect teachers, students, and educators when implementing neuroeducation in the school.…”