Abstract
Teachers often face situations that require them to apply knowledge about the mind and brain to education. Past studies have indicated that even if teachers show interest in cognitive neuroscience, they show high rates of adhesion to neuromyths. In the most common questionnaire, though, respondents do not compare neuromyths and correct information based on neuroscience. The present study proposes a multiple-choice questionnaire that presents scenarios occurring in school. The most common and the new questionnaire were administered to 174 Italian teachers. In the most common questionnaire, teachers generally had the same likelihood of accepting neuromyths as the literature reports. In the new questionnaire, both general knowledge and beliefs about neuromyths were significantly lower. With respect to the previous method, the new questionnaire suggests that teachers’ adhesion to neuromyths in realistic situations does not match their explicit beliefs. Thus, the present research suggests that questions based on feasible scenarios are a useful method to assess neuromyths.