ABSTRACT
This chapter considers developments that continue to be influential at present: Howard Gardner's ideas on multiple intelligences (MI) and certain ideas on neuroscience and education. A principal assumption underlying MI theory is that children have different preferred 'learning styles'. Not everyone, it is argued, learns best through traditional methods which draw heavily on linguistic and logical skills. Some of the associated learning packages and pedagogical approaches have come in for criticism, especially from neuroscientists. This criticism led to the coining of the term 'neuromyth', which was first employed in an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report on brain learning and later by Goswami and Purdy. Brain-based educational packages are based on an over-literal interpretation of hemispheric specializations, 'where brain attributes are assumed to come from either one hemisphere or the other, and which has led to teachers being encouraged to identify pupils as either "left-brained" or "right-brained" learners'.
