Hello internet!
I've been crazy busy the past few months and haven't been able to blog. I presented in Canada at TOSCON2015 and then presented a new talk at NATECLA. I've met some really nice people and had a great time but I'm hoping to get back to blogging now. And to start things off is a guest blog which I'm really excited about.
Around the time of TESOL 2015 I heard about a talk called 'Neuroscience, learning styles and teacher training.' The title worried me as I thought it might be some kind of hymn to woo. Once I saw the slides dear reader, my heart leapt! the authors, Carol Lethaby and Patricia Harries did something I'd been hoping to do. They repeat the Dekker 2012 study on neuromyths, but with EFL teachers!
The study basically asks teachers whether or not they believe statements, like "we only use 10% of our brain" are true or false and the results are shocking! Around 93% of UK teachers believe that employing learning styles will lead to better results, despite evidence to contrary. (more info about their findings here)
I wrote to Carol almost as soon as I heard about the research to congratulate her and we've been corresponding for months now. I asked her if she would consider writing a guest blog and she graciously agreed (of course, not before Mike Griffin got to her first *shakes fist*). So here it is! I'm exceedingly pleased to present Carol Lethaby writing about two topics which are of interest to me, gender and skepticism.
Over to Carol...
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A big thank you to Russ Mayne, for inviting
me to guest blog - in this post I plan to uphold the tradition of debunking
popular myths that has become Russ’s trademark. I've chosen to focus on the
idea of women’s and men’s brains and particularly the idea that the sexes
supposedly process language differently.
This is an area of considerable significance to language teachers and
one that I have been tackling in both talks and articles
in recent years.
The popular view is that men process
language only in the left hemisphere, while women use both their right and left
hemispheres to process language, which supposedly makes women better at
language. This idea has been repeated again and again in the literature until
it has come to be accepted as fact, giving rise to books with such ludicrous
titles as: ‘Why
men don’t iron’, ‘Why
men never remember and women never forget’, ‘Why men
don’t listen and women can’t read maps’ and my own personal favourite, ‘Why men
don’t have a clue and women always need more shoes’!
This video from the
entertainer, Mark Gungor, illustrates beautifully the popular idea. There is, however, one problem with this
account of things … that it’s not true. Now, you may argue that this is all harmless,
and just a bit of fun, – ‘laugh your way to a better marriage’ is the name of Gungor’s website and books - even a great
topic for discussion in the language teaching classroom; but is it really
harmless if the notion that there are pre-determined differences between the
way the sexes think and use language is reinforcing self-fulfilling gender
stereotypes? This has been termed neurosexism by Cordelia Fine and others, and in Fine’s
awesomely readable book ‘Delusions of
Gender’, she really takes researchers to task for shoddy research and
rubbish conclusions based on spurious findings:
“It is appalling to me that one can, apparently, say whatever drivel one likes about the male and female brain, and enjoy the pleasure of seeing it published in an reputable newspaper, changing a school’s educational policy, or becoming a bestseller.” (Fine, 2010: 174)
I mentioned some of the appalling,
blatantly sexist titles above, but there are of course also books that are
taken very seriously, based on the idea that female and male brains are very
different - Why Gender Matters, Boys
and Girls Learn Differently, The Female
Brain, to name but a few. Supposed
inherent brain differences between girls and boys have been used as a reason to
separate the sexes and to teach them differently.
So, where did the idea come from that men
and women process language differently and how does it fit in with supposed
brain differences? Like many a good neuromyth, there was originally some,
albeit dubious, research base for this claim.
It started in 1995 when Shaywitz, Shaywitz et al
published a study based on neuroimaging that showed eleven out of nineteen
women’s brains with activation in the left and
right hemisphere while the other eight women’s brains and nineteen men’s brains
activated in the left hemisphere only,
when doing one particular language task (concerned with rhyming words), out of
the various tasks that they were asked to carry out.
Now, there are several problems with making
this conclusion from the study.
Firstly, this is an example of what scientists call ‘reverse inference’ –
that is drawing conclusions about what and how people think based on the
physical brain. Fine has no patience for
this and she warns of the dangers of drawing conclusions about how we think
based on neuroscientific data. “Inferring a psychological state from brain
activity … is fraught with peril.” (2010: 151)
Brain scientists
warn against making conclusions about cognition based on brain activation
seen during imaging and this is precisely what the Shaywitz et al study does.
Secondly, this is a very small study (38 people) and does not address the
fact that, in the other language tasks participants were asked to perform,
there were no significant differences between male and female
participants, nor the fact that not all women displayed the bilateral
activation that was so interesting to scientists.
Note too, that all participants were
adults, so how can we conclude from this that this is a hard-wired female-male difference?
As neurobiologist, Lise Eliot,
points out, nearly all the evidence is based on the adult brain – “Who’s to say
that such differences [in the brain] are caused by nature and not by learning?”
(Eliot, 2009: 9). Brain scientists point
to gender differences in brain structure being related to the complex
interrelationship between genetic factors, our experiences and our biology, in
other words, what we do and what happens to us affects what our brain looks
like. “Experience can alter sex
differences in brain structure” (2004:
211) says Melissa
Hines, a neuroscientific researcher who has been looking at the question of
gender and the brain for over 35 years.
As educators, doesn't it seem more helpful to look at how gendering in
the classroom may contribute to learning differences as well as how education
can remediate those differences?
Thirdly, and most importantly, neuroscientific studies done since have not
shown the sex differences in language processing found in the Shaywitz
study. It has been found that most women
and most men process language in the
left hemisphere of the brain and that both sexes show a tremendous amount of
interconnectivity between the hemispheres.
After carrying out a meta-analysis of functional imaging of sex
differences, Sommer
et al (2004) conclude:
“In summary, this meta-analysis found no significant sex difference in functional language lateralization in a large sample of 377 men and 442 women. Thus, the hypothesis that language functions are generally presented more bilaterally in women than in men is not supported. This suggests that language lateralization is unlikely to underlie sex differences in cognition, and their biological basis remains elusive.”
So why haven't we heard more about Sommer’s
study (and others like it) saying there is no support for innate differences
between how the sexes process language? Why does the popular media continue to
promote the idea that male and female brains are “completely different”? Unfortunately studies that don’t show
differences between the sexes are often underreported. Hines talks about this problem as well as the
converse “overreporting of positive results” (2004: 6). To address this issue, Janet Hyde 2005 proposed the ‘Gender
Similarities Hypothesis’ after conducting a meta-analysis of 46
meta-analyses of studies concerned with sex differences. She sums up like this:
“It is time to consider the costs of overinflated claims of gender differences. Arguably, they cause harm in numerous realms, including women’s opportunities in the workplace, couple conflict and communication, and analyses of self-esteem problems among adolescents. Most important, these claims are not consistent with the scientific data. [my emphasis]” (Hyde, 2005: 590)
This focus on looking for sex differences
continues to this day. In 2013 there was
a study splashed all over the newspapers including this headline in the Mail
Online “Men's
and women's brains: the truth! As research proves the sexes' brains ARE wired
differently, why women's are cleverer ounce for ounce - and men can't read
female feelings”
Cordelia Fine responds by pointing out that 1) the conclusions don’t
take into consideration differences between larger and smaller brains (they
have different structures because of size - male brains tend to be larger
because men tend to be larger and larger brains are needed to control larger
bodies), 2) there’s no discussion of the plasticity of the brain and the effect
of our experiences on our neural structure (see above) and 3) the study is full of reverse inference
based on legitimising tired stereotypes (you can see Fine’s full response to
the study here). But the damage has already been done and the
study is quoted as ‘proving’
that female-male differences are hard-wired when in reality it shows no such
thing!
Peddling sex differences in brain function
is clearly ‘sexy’ and sometimes lucrative, and neuroscience is a very tempting
way to try to explain differences between the sexes. Isn't it time, though,
that we got away from this obsession with looking for hard-wired differences
between the sexes and considered the part that our experiences and especially
education, play in female and male disparities?
Given the potentially harmful nature of neurosexism, shouldn't we be
more critical and look more closely at what the studies should, can and do tell us,
rather than merely accepting the narrative that confirms our cliché-ridden
beliefs and sells yet more books and toys?
References
Fine, C (2010) Delusions
of gender: How our minds, society, and neurosexism create difference. New York: W. W. Norton.
Hines, M
(2004) Brain gender. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Hyde, J S
(2005) The gender similarities hypothesis’ American
Psychologist, Vol 60 (6), Sep 2005, pp581-592
Lethaby, C (2014) ‘Children, gender
and learning’ in Primary Methodology
Handbook: Practical ideas for ELT Richmond
Publishing
Shaywitz B A, Shaywitz S E, et al (1995). Sex Differences in the functional organization of
the brain for Language. Nature, 373(6515),
607-609.
Sommer, I et al (2004) Do women really
have more bilateral language representation than men? A meta-analysis of
functional imaging studies Brain,
127, 1845–1852
Timely and lucid debunking of yet another persistent - and iniquitous - language myth - thank you, Carol!
ReplyDeleteAnother useful reference is Deborah Cameron's The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages?
http://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Mars-Venus-Different/dp/0199550999
Carol recommended that very book to me!
DeleteThank you for commenting, Scott :-)
ReplyDeleteYes, I like Deborah Cameron’s book too – a good discussion of the social causes of perceived sex differences in language and communication styles. I actually refer to it in a post elsewhere called
‘Are girls better than boys at language?’
http://www.richmondshare.com.br/are-girls-better-than-boys-at-language/
I remember TVNZ showing a documentary that clearly implied women were more intelligent than men. It even made the newspapers the next day. Of course, they were just trying to sell a story to the female market. Just a few weeks later the nation's favourite televized quiz show came down to the finals - at senior and youth levels - and the finalists were all men. Same thing happened in Australia. The media were then quick as lightning in trying to explain this away Idiots! ha! ha! ha!
ReplyDeleteI saw an earlier version of this (as you know) Carol. It was great then and great(er) now! Glad to see Scott mention Debbie Cameron's book (we've talked about that before). I wonder: which is more dangerous (aka prejudicial to student achievement), the learning styles thing or the gender thing? Is it possible that one of them is benign, the other very definitely malignant? ??
ReplyDeleteooooh hahaha...a very mischievous question ;)
DeleteIt would be interesting to know the effect of gender of outcomes. Hana Rosini suggests nowadays being a woman will increase your academic potential (http://www.ted.com/talks/hanna_rosin_new_data_on_the_rise_of_women?language=en) but I don't know how accurate her data is.
Thank you for your comments, Jeremy – you know how strongly I feel about this. :-)
DeleteAs for your question, it’s a good one, but as Russ says somewhat mischievous! ;-)
I imagine you mean that thinking female and male brains are innately different is more potentially limiting / damaging than believing that accommodating learning styles enhances learning, and yes, on the surface, I’d agree. But on another level, they can both be seen as ‘neuromyths’ ie mistaken ideas about the brain and how the brain works and as such, perhaps both part of the same problem in ELT?