Why Right-Brain Teaching is Half-Witted: A Critique of the Misapplication of Neuroscience to Education

Mind, Brain, and Education

Volumn 5, Issue 3, 2011, Pages 121-127

  Lindell, Annukka K ^a   Kidd, Evan ^a,b  

^a LA TROBE UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

^b UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 80051594604     PISSN: 17512271     EISSN: 1751228X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-228X.2011.01120.x     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. Alferink, L. A., & Farmer-Dougan, V. (2010). Brain-(not) based education: Dangers of misunderstanding and misapplication of neuroscience research. Exceptionality, 18, 42-52.
2. Andreassi, J. L. (2007). Psychophysiology: Human behavior and physiological response. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
3. Bates, E., Thal, D., Aram, D., Eisele, J., Nass, R., & Trauner, D. (1997). From first words to grammar in children with focal brain injury. Developmental Neuropsychology, 13, 275-343.
4. Bates, E., Vicari, S., & Trauner, D. (1999). Neural mediation of language development: Perspective from lesion studies on infants and children. In H. Tager-Flusberg (Ed.), Neurodevelopmental disorders (pp. 533-581). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
5. Beaumont, G., Young, A., & McManus, I. C. (1984). Hemisphericity: A critical review. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 1, 191-212.
6. Bogen, J. E., DeZure, R., TenHouten, N., & Marsh, J. (1972). The other side of the brain IV: The A/P ratio. Bulletin of the Los Angeles Neurological Society, 37, 49-61.
7. Bogen, J. E., Fisher, E. D., & Vogel, P. J. (1965). Cerebral commisurotomy: A second case report. Journal of the American Medical Association, 194, 1328-1329.
8. Broca, P. (1861). Remarques sur le siege de la faculte du langage articule; suivies d'une observation d'aphemie. Bulletin de la Société Anatomique, 6, 398-407.
9. Bruer, J. T. (2002). Avoiding the pediatrician's error: How neuroscientists can help educators (and themselves). Nature Neuroscience (Supplement), 5, 1031-1033.
10. Bruer, J. T. (2008). In search of ... brain-based education. In The Jossey-Bass reader on the brain and learning (pp. 51-69). San Francisco: Wiley.
11. Bryden, M. P. (1982). Laterality: Functional asymmetry in the intact brain. New York: Academic Press.
12. Bryden, M. P., & Allard, F. A. (1981). Shortcomings of the verbal-non-verbal dichotomy: Seems to us we've heard this song before. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 4(1), 65-66.
13. Carlsson, I., Wendt, P. E., & Risberg, J. (2000). On the neurobiology of creativity: Differences in frontal activity between high and low creative subjects. Neuropsychologia, 38, 873-885.
14. Chabris, C. F., & Kosslyn, S. M. (1998). How do the cerebral hemispheres contribute to encoding spatial relations? Current Directions in Psychological Sciences, 7, 8-14.
15. Coch, D., & Ansari, D. (2009). Thinking about mechanisms is crucial to connecting neuroscience and education. Cortex, 45, 546-547.
16. Corballis, M. C. (1980). Laterality and myth. American Psychologist, 35, 284-295.
17. Corballis, M. C., & Sergent, J. (1988). Imagery in a commissurotomized patient. Neuropsychologia, 26, 13-26.
18. Della Sala, S. (2009).The use and misuse of neuroscience in education. Cortex, 45, 443.
19. Edwards, B. (2001). The new drawing on the right side of the brain (3rd ed.). New York: Putnum.
20. Evans, N., & Levinson, S. (2009). The myth of language universals. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32, 429-448.
21. Freed, J., & Parsons, L. (1998). Right-brained children in a left-brained world: Unlocking the potential of your ADD child. New York: Fireside.
22. Gazzaniga, M. S. (1970). The bisected brain. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
23. Gibson, C., Folley, B. S., & Park, S. (2009). Enhanced divergent thinking and creativity in musicians: A behavioral and near-infrared spectroscopy study. Brain and Cognition, 69, 162-169.
24. Goswami, U. (2004). Neuroscience and education. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 74, 1-14.
25. Goswami, U. (2006). Neuroscience and education: From research to practice? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 7, 406-413.
26. Hellige, J. B. (1993). Hemispheric asymmetry: What's right and what's Left. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
27. Holland, S., Plante, E., Byars, A., Strawsburg, R., Schmithorst, V., & Ball, W. Jr. (2001). Normal fMRI brain activation patterns in children performing a verb generation task. Neuroimage, 14, 837-843.
28. Holmes, J., Gathercole, S. E., & Dunning, D. L. (2009). Adaptive training leads to sustained enhancement of poor working memory in children. Developmental Science, 12, F9-F15.
29. Howard-Jones, P. A. (2009). Scepticism is not enough. Cortex, 45, 550-551.
30. Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2007). A tale of two cases: Lessons for education from the study of two boys living with half their brains. Mind, Brain, and Education, 1, 66-83.
31. Jorgenson, O. (2003). Brain scam? Why educators should be careful about embracing 'brain research'. The Educational Forum, 67, 364-369.
32. Lindell, A. K. (2006). In your right mind: Right hemisphere contributions to human language processing and production. Neuropsychology Review, 16, 131-148.
33. Lindell, A. K. (2011). Lateral thinkers are not so laterally minded: Hemispheric asymmetry, interaction, and creativity. Laterality, 16, 479-498.
34. Marchman, V., Saccuman, C., & Wulfeck, B. (2004). Productive use of the English past tense in children with focal brain injury and specific language impairment. Brain and Language, 88, 202-214.
35. McCabe, D. P., & Castle, A. D. (2008). Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning. Cognition, 107, 343-352.
36. McKean, K. (1985). Of two minds: Selling the right brain. Discover, 6(4), 30-41.
37. Neuroscience Research in Education Summit: The Promise of Interdisciplinary Partnerships Between Brain Sciences and Education. University of California, Irvine. June 22-24, 2009.
38. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2007). Understanding the brain: The birth of a learning science. Paris: Author.
39. Parry, T., & Gregory, G. (2006). Designing brain-compatible learning. Cheltenham, Australia: Hawker Brownlow Education.
40. Petty, G. (2004). Teaching today: A practical guide. Cheltenham, UK: Nelson Thornes.
41. Reilly, J., Losh, M., Bellugi, U., & Wulfeck, B. (2004). Frog, Where are you? Narratives in children with specific language impairment, early focal brain injury and Williams Syndrome. Brain and Language, 88, 229-247.
42. Ressel, V., Wilke, M., Lidzba, K., Lutzenberger, W., & Krägeloh-Mann, I. (2008). Increases in language lateralization in normal children as observed using magnetoencephalography. Brain and Language, 106, 167-176.
43. Runco, M. A. (2004). Creativity. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 657-687.
44. Sousa, D. A. (1995). How the brain learns: A classroom teacher's guide. Reston, VA: National Association of Secondary School Principals.
45. Sperry, R. W. (1961). Cerebral organization and behavior. Science, 133, 1749-1757.
46. Sperry, R. W. (1982). Some effects of disconnecting the cerebral hemispheres. Science, 217, 1223-1226.
47. Staudt, M., Grodd, W., Niemann, G., Wildgruber, D., Erb, M., & Krägeloh-Mann, I. (2001). Early left periventricular brain lesions induce hemispheric organization of speech. Neurology, 57, 122-125.
48. St Claire-Thompson, H., Stevens, R., Hunt, A., & Bolder, E. (2010). Improving children's working memory and classroom performance. Educational Psychology, 30, 203-219.
49. Sylvan, L. J., & Christodoulou, J. A. (2010). Understanding the role of neuroscience in brain based products: A guide for educators and consumers. Mind, Brain, and Education, 4, 1-7.
50. Szaflarski, J., Schmithorst, V., Altaye, M., Byars, A., Ret, J., Plante, E., et al. (2006). A longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging study of language development in children 5 to 11 years old. Annals of Neurology, 59, 796-807.
51. Tomasello, M. (2008). Origins of human communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
52. Van Lancker, D. (1997). Rags to riches: Our increasing appreciation of cognitive and communicative abilities of the human right cerebral hemisphere. Brain and Language, 57, 1-11.
53. Vicari, S., Albertoni, A., Chilosi, A., Cipriani, P., Cioni, G., & Bates, E. (2000). Plasticity and reorganization during language development in children with early brain injury. Cortex, 36, 31-36.
54. Weisberg, D. S., Keil, F. C., Goodstein, J., Rawson, E., & Gray, J. R. (2008). The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 470-477.
55. Wernicke, C. (1911). The symptom of complex aphasia. In. A. E. Church (Ed.), Diseases of the nervous system (pp. 265-324). New York: Appleton.
56. Williams, L. V. (1986). Teaching for the two-sided mind: A guide to right brain/left brain education. New York: Simon & Schuster.
57. Zaidel, E. (1978). Lexical organization in the right hemisphere. In P. A. Buser & A. Rougeul-Buser (Eds.), Cerebral correlates of conscious experience. Amsterdam: Elsevier.