Keep NLP out of education

The following was adapted from a comment I made on Training Zone, see my previous post:

The UK (and South Africa) has just been through the Brain Gym in education debacle. I believe that the legitimate role of neuroscience in education suffered as a result. Because of its unfortunate and pretentious title, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is (falsely) associated with neuroscience. I note that Andy Bradbury recognises this issue on his website, where he declares that "The name is a major pain." Elsewhere he indicates that NLP cannot be a pseudoscience because it never claimed to be a science in the first place. I, however (I think most people do), believe that if something looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. Lay people (parents, teachers, managers) can often not distinguish between science and pseudocience (or art if you prefer) to the detriment of the former and the advantage of the latter.

I have read the report quoted by Garry Platt, “Neuro-linguistic programming and learning: teacher case studies on the impact of NLP in education.” This added to my concern. At least two of the authors seem to have a vested interest in NLP (Churches and Tosey). They have links with the University of Surrey group, most of whom according to Dave Snowden in the Wikipedia discussion pages on NLP, have NLP consultancies. Are there conflicts of interest?

The report consists of a literature study, which I do not now have time to peruse. The conclusion from the literature study states: "It was also clear from the literature that contrary to some popular opinion, there have been a number of academic publications on NLP that are supportive of its use in schools and education in general." For the moment I have to take that at face value.

The rest of the research consists of anecdotal "evidence" from teachers who have, or are using NLP in their classrooms. The authors conclude from the teacher anecdotes that " ... the impact of NLP is supported, or at least the perception of its effectiveness is supported." To my mind teacher anecdotes cannot provide scientific support for NLP and teacher perceptions of effectiveness are without value. Teachers who use NLP may themselves have a vested interest (also sunken cost fallacy) and are subject to confirmation bias.

While the authors of the report recognize that their evidence will be questioned, they suggest that NLP be taught to teachers because there should be a balance between evaluation and innovation. I wonder, however, how much nonsense have been introduced into education (and business) in the name of innovation? The one thing, in my opinion, that education does not need is another ill-considered fad.