The movements are also linked to ideas and initiatives such as accelerated learning, thinking skills, learning styles and learning preferences, such as VAK (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic) and multiple intelligences. For example, ‘whole-brain thinking’ (http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art28465.asp) is said to occur when the two hemispheres of the brain work together to create a ‘whole brain thinking pattern’.
This is said to enhance our logical thinking, intuition, analytical skills and artistic ability—quite a tall order. The idea is based on the theory that the two cerebral hemispheres are responsible for different aspects of our thinking/cognition. The ‘left brain’ is thought to be the location of logical, rational, sequential, analytical, objective and rational thinking; the right brain is the intuitive, aesthetic, holistic, synthesising and subjective part.
Allegedly, most learners and thinkers have a definite preference for one side or the other but some people are said to be capable of using both hemispheres and both modes of thinking. Advocates of whole-brain thinking claim that engineers and scientists are often leftbrain thinkers, while most poets and artists are right-brain thinkers, though the evidence for this is somewhat hazy.
Some of history’s greatest inventors and pioneers, such as Leonardo da Vinci, are said to be whole-brain thinkers. It is said that schools and formal education tend to emphasise the use of the analytic, logical half and play down the holistic right brain. They do not give enough weight to the creative, imaginative, synthesising right hemisphere. This can be rectified by including more activities such as patterning, role playing, visual activity and the use of metaphors and analogies. This must be matched by new forms of assessment, which value and involve right-brain activities.
Brain gym
Brain gym is said to have originated in the 1970s with the work of educators Paul and Gail Dennison (Dennison and Dennison, 1974) (it is sometimes called educational kinesiology). It is basically a range of simple movements or exercises designed to engage, energise and relax students, and prepare them for learning. Advocates of ‘brain gym’ argue that its use can get the two halves of the brain working together and that it can bring about clear and rapid improvement in pupils’ concentration, memory, reading, writing, organising, listening and physical coordination. Some examples of the actual activities (from a list of almost 30) that pupils are encouraged to do are:
- head patting and tummy rubbing: pat your head with your right hand whilst rubbing your tummy with your left; do this 20 times, then swap hands;
- lazy 8s: draw the figure 8 three times in the air or on paper with each hand about three times, then with both hands together;
- writing your name in the air: first with each hand and then with both hands—again, the bigger the better;
- double doodle: draw with both hands at the same time, in, out, up and down;
- neck rolls: breathe deeply, relax your shoulders and drop your head forward. Allow your head to slowly roll from side to side as you breathe out any tightness. Your chin draws a smooth curve across your chest as your neck relaxes;
- belly breathing: rest your hand on your abdomen. Blow out all the old air in your lungs in short, soft little puffs. Take a slow, deep breath, filling up gently, like a balloon. Feel your hand softly rise as you inhale and fall as you exhale. If you arch your back after inhaling, the air goes even deeper.
● http://www.braingym.org.uk/
● http://www.tagteacher.net/grapevine/index.htm?http://www.tagteacher.net/ubb/Forum2/HTML/000372.html
Why have schools seized upon brain-based learning?
It seems that many schools in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries latched on to BBL, for understandable reasons. Some were perhaps searching for ‘scientific authority’ for the way they were working with a huge variety of learners, learning styles and learning preferences. Others were perhaps desperately seeking ways of improving learning and attainment in schools that were said to be ‘failing’ by inspectors and the media. It could be said, harshly, that they were clutching at straws.
Others may have genuinely been persuaded by the science behind BBL and were able to see its benefits in the classroom for pupils, e.g. by introducing variety into lessons; by having actual breaks (such as brain gym) in lessons; or using brain gym activities to get lessons started and pupils focused. For many teachers, it worked and still works and that is justification enough—whatever the neuro-scientists, using the latest scanning techniques, discover or hypothesise about the human brain.
Critics and sceptics
Throughout the history of education, as a movement springs up and gains momentum, so do its critics, rather like predator and prey. For example, Bruer (1997) argued strongly against the claims made by certain brain-based learning advocates: ‘these ideas have been around for a decade, are often based on misconceptions and over-generalizations of what we know about the brain, and have little to offer to educators’. He claimed that the advocates of BBL are trying to ‘build a bridge too far’.
In a similar vein, Ravitch (2000) called brain-based learning a troubling trend, and a ‘distortion of what cognitive scientists have learned about how children learn’. She suggested that brain-based learning might be a commercial bandwagon. My own observations of the proliferating number of courses, companies and consultants offering expensive workshops and resources on BBL support her view of its commercial impact.
One of the most popular BBL texts has been heavily criticised for its style over content approach, for its lack of scientific rigour and for being an ideas book rather than a research-based factual account. Despite its critics, many educators and researchers continue to follow the theory and practice that come under the broad label of ‘brain-based learning’. Some classroom teachers who have taken aspects of it into their practice seem to be firmly convinced that it makes a positive difference to learning and lessons.
Many teachers, for example, advocate the classroom use of ideas such as: the provision of drinking water, intermittent physical activity and lesson breaks, giving children an insight into the way the brain works, brain gym, VAK checklists in lesson planning and the sharing of learning objectives with pupils. The question of how effective BBL techniques are in improving learning remains open but there is no doubt that the publicity given to BBL has made an enormous impact on certain teachers.
The movement, and the industry behind it, look set to continue. To end on a positive note: the emphasis on ‘brain-based learning’ has certainly been one of the important factors contributing to the increased focus on learning that is now a welcome feature in educational debate. Certainly, there are four important points about learning that owe some debt to BBL: first, that a multi-sensory approach to learning and classroom teaching is vital—learning and teaching should involve visual aspects (pictures, images, diagrams), auditory activity (listening, speaking, using words) and kinaesthetic activity (touch, movement); second, psychological, emotional and physical safety and security are essential for learning to take place; third, it is vital that learners are active, engaged and in control of their own learning; and finally, research on the brain has shown that it has huge, untapped potential in terms of the billions of neurons and interconnections between them that could be made but are not, even in the most famous of brains, such as Einstein’s, which have been studied post-mortem.
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