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Using personal teaching experience and research training, the author traces how recommendations such as learning styles, Brain Gym, and Neuro-Linguistic Programming persist despite criticism. The article highlights a pattern of cargo cult science, circular citations, small samples, and reliance on opinion rather than rigorous testing. It explains how following research trails backward can reveal misconceptions and clarify what teachers can trust.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/group-work-for-the-good-unpacking-the-research-behind-one-popular-classroom-strategy/590457/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/group-work-for-the-good-unpacking-the-research-behind-one-popular-classroom-strategy/590457.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Pentious","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-04","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":52},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"Why does the author challenge common teaching orthodoxy?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The author realizes that much of what is treated as established teaching knowledge can be unsubstantiated, based on bias or opinion rather than reliable evidence.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"Which education ideas does the article criticize as weakly supported?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"It criticizes Neuro-Linguistic Programming, learning styles, and Brain Gym, describing them as long treated as credible despite broad criticism and questionable scientific foundations.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"How does the author suggest evaluating educational research claims?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"The author recommends following the research citations backward to inspect the evidence base, checking for rigor, sample size, and whether hypotheses are genuinely tested.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},590457,1792190991,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":52,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":34,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":144,"preview_page_count":4},1374404730887,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_6f874abed73319feea01a86fa6f0fab8","Group Work for the Good  \nUnpacking the Research behind One Popular Classroom Strategy  \nILLUSTRAT IONS BY JAMES YANG  \nBy Tom Bennett  \nI  \nt wasn’t until I had been teaching 11-to 18-year-olds for four years that I realized I had been consistently misled. Up until that point Ihad trusted my teacher training to provide the best of what had been discovered in the discipline of teaching and  \nlearning. If Ihad been shown a method or theory by which I could perform my job more e􀀛ciently, I assumed it would have been forged in the crucible of experience and evidence. I assumed that what we knew about teaching, say, chemistry, for example, pro  \ngressedin a linear, accumulative way. But I found the opposite.  \nAs a philosophy and religious studies high schoolteacher in the United Kingdom, I discovered that a good deal of what was considered orthodoxy in my profession was unsubstantiated. I believe  \nTom Bennett is a high school teacher at the Jo Richardson Community School in East London, England. He is a columnist for the Times Educational Supplement and one of the United Kingdom’s most popular teacher bloggers. He has written four books about teacher training and classroom management, and his online resources have been downloaded more than 1 million times. In 2013, he started researchED, a grass-roots organization to bring teachers and research together. is article is adapted with permission from his book Teacher Proof (London: Routledge, 2013). Visit the [publisher at www.tandf.co.uk. Many Taylor & Francis and Routledge books](publisher at www.tandf.co.uk. Many Taylor & Francis and Routledge books)[ ](publisher at www.tandf.co.uk. Many Taylor & Francis and Routledge books)[are now available as eBooks](are now available as eBooks).  \nmany of my teacher colleagues in the United States have made similar discoveries.  \nIn 2004, Ihadjust emerged from the U.K. Department forEducation’s Fast Track recruitment program into teaching, where I had spent weekends learning about Neuro-Linguistic Programming, a program called Brain Gym, and how to sort my students according to their learning styles.* Iwastoldthat my students possessed multiple intelligences, and it was strongly hinted to me that the more technology I could accommodate into my lessons, the better their needs as digital natives would be met. My initial classroom design of rows and columns was frowned upon, and tablesand horseshoes were recommended. And all because, I was told, the research con-􀀜rmed each avenue.  \nExcept that it didn’t. Often, it barely addressed the topics. I won a teacher fellowship at Cambridge University, where I was given the opportunity to pull back the curtain of the mighty Oz of research. It was an epiphany. As I learned to navigate the university’s endless libraries of education journals and papers, I was struck by a thought that at 􀀜rst I dismissed as impertinence: a good deal of research I had been recommended as a new teacher  \n*For more about the research behind learning styles, see “Do Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learners Need Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Instruction?” in the Summer 2005 issue of American Educator, available [at www.aft.org/ae/summer2005/](at www.aft.org/ae/summer2005/)[ ](at www.aft.org/ae/summer2005/)[willingham.](willingham.)  \n32 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SPRING 2015  \nwas astonishingly misguided.† I felt like a heretic. e temerity of my emergent conclusion struck me as astonishing, rightly. But my master’s degree in philosophy (with a focus on epistemology) kept pointing me back the same way: a lot of what was considered research was often based on little more than bias or opinion.  \nFor instance, Neuro-Linguistic Programming was a ragbag of fashionable pseudoscience that had been broadly criticized, even at the time of its publication, but still it lurched on for decades. It was mystical hoo-ha that rested on the “science of success” that predicted among other things that you could tell when someone was lying. Learning","cbCaiice2CdZ4iaU","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiice2CdZ4iaU","pdf",247291,"English","# Group Work for the Good\n## Questioning orthodoxy in teaching research\n## Examples of unsupported education claims\n## Following research evidence trails","[{\"question\":\"Why does the author challenge common teaching orthodoxy?\",\"answer\":\"The author realizes that much of what is treated as established teaching knowledge can be unsubstantiated, based on bias or opinion rather than reliable evidence.\"},{\"question\":\"Which education ideas does the article criticize as weakly supported?\",\"answer\":\"It criticizes Neuro-Linguistic Programming, learning styles, and Brain Gym, describing them as long treated as credible despite broad criticism and questionable scientific foundations.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the author suggest evaluating educational research claims?\",\"answer\":\"The author recommends following the research citations backward to inspect the evidence base, checking for rigor, sample size, and whether hypotheses are genuinely tested.\"}]","Group Work for the Good - Unpacking the Research behind One Popular Classroom Strategy | PDF",1792069669,18]