Editors+Notes+from+the+21st+Century+Skills+article

** How Right-Brain vs. Left-Brain Thinking Impacts Learning **

// Curriculum // – In order to be more “whole-brained” in their orientation, schools need to give equal weight to the arts, creativity, and the skills of imagination and synthesis.

// Instruction // – To foster a more whole-brained scholastic experience, teachers should use instruction techniques that connect with both sides of the brain. They can increase their classroom’s right-brain learning activities by incorporating more patterning, metaphors, analogies, role playing, visuals, and movement into their reading, calculation, and analytical activities.

// Assessment // – For a more accurate whole-brained evaluation of student learning, educators must develop new forms of assessment that honor right-brained talents and skills.


 * Andrew J. Rotherham ** is Cofounder and Publisher of Education Sector and writes the blog Eduwonk.com; arotherham@educationsector.org. **Daniel Willingham** is Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia and the author of //Why Don't Students Like School?// (Jossey-Bass, 2009); willingham@virginia.edu.

Copyright © 2009 by Association for Supervision and Curriculum