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Effective instruction emphasizes active learning through creative play, artwork, physical activity, and social play.

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Children play an active role in their own cognitive development by interacting with the world. Some educators advocate for brain-based education that capitalizes on children’s natural inclinations toward active learning. Brain-based education views learning as multidimensional, including more than academics. In its simplest sense, brain-based education encourages children to develop all aspects of their brains, tapping physical, musical, creative, cognitive, and other abilities. Given that the brain changes with experience, enriched everyday experiences such as learning a musical instrument, role-playing, and expanding vocabulary may alter children’s brains.

Neurological researchers, however, are critical of some popular brain-based educational approaches, such as those that emphasize teaching different parts of the brain separately (Howard-Jones, 2014). For example, a common brain-based education instructional strategy is to teach for the left or right lateralized brain. The “left brain” is said to be the “logical” hemisphere, concerned with language and analysis, while the “right brain” is said to be the “intuitive” hemisphere concerned with spatial patterns and creativity (Sousa, 2001). Brain-based learning theorists may then encourage teachers to teach specific hemispheres during adapted lessons. To teach to the left hemisphere, teachers have students engage in reading and writing, while right hemisphere–oriented lessons have students create visual representations of concepts (Sousa, 2001). Brain researchers, however, are sharply critical of left/right brain teaching because, although the brain is lateralized, it functions as a whole (Howard-Jones, 2014). Language and spatial information—and, for that matter, most other abilities—are processed differently but simultaneously by the two hemispheres (Corballis, Lalueza-Fox, Orlando, Enard, & Green, 2014). It is highly improbable, then, that any given lesson, regardless of analytic or spatial type, can stimulate activation of only one hemisphere.

For this reason, some experts argue that the leap from neurological research to the classroom is large and not supported (Alferink & Farmer-Dougan, 2010). For many researchers, the problem of brain-based education is its reliance on the brain itself and in its oversimplification of complex theories and research (Alferink & Farmer-Dougan, 2010; Busso & Pollack, 2014). Although we have learned much, brain research is in its infancy. Researchers do not know enough about how the brain functions and learns to draw direct inferences about teaching (Bruer, 2008). For example, MRI research illuminates patterns of brain activity, but researchers do not yet conclusively know what those patterns mean or if those patterns of brain activity have implications for behavior (Willis, 2007). Applying these findings to inform education is premature. Many researchers, therefore, find it problematic to state that teaching strategies should be derived from brain research—at least not yet.

On the positive side, however, brain-based education emphasizes active learning. Teachers who foster active learning encourage students to become engaged and participate in their own learning, such as being creative in artwork, physical activity, and story making (Bruer, 2008). Active learning is an important educational strategy. Although many developmental researchers argue that the neurological science behind brain-based education is questionable, the active learning practices that comprise many brain-based learning activities advance children’s learning.