Co-Creating Solutions. A CTL-sponsored blog to foster and encourage professional conversation about teaching and learning.

In my post Why Support the Arts? I noted six points summarized from an article “Willingham: Six Practical Reasons Why Arts Education is Not a Mere Luxury” (Washington Post, November 23, 2009) by cognitive scientist Dan Willingham. Development psychologist Jerry Kagan presented these points during a 2009 conference called “Neuroeducation: Learning, Arts and the Brain.” This post addresses the second point: The arts offer that sense of agency, of creation.

Like many parents today, we allowed ourselves to be haunted by the ghost of ‘what if.’”

Kagan observed that today’s children have “very little sense of ‘agency’— the sense that they undertake activities that, however small, have an impact on the world.” As a child he had the autonomy to explore his hometown on his own. But this is something that many parents today do not allow. “When not exploring, my activities were necessarily of my own design, whereas children today typically watch television or roam the internet, activities that are frequently passive and which encourage conformity.” The arts, Kagan argues, offer that sense of agency and open avenues for creation.

I find Kagen’s points here to be thought-provoking. As the father of two children, I have tried hard to avoid the cliché incantations of how hard my life was as a youth—when actually, compared to the life of my depression-era grandfather, my youth was a cake-walk. I never trudged miles to school barefooted and in the snow, nor did I have to work long hard hours on a farm for pennies day. My parents were able to provide a stable setting for me and my siblings where we could readily explore our worlds with relative freedom and autonomy.

My wife and I were never comfortable with allowing total freedom of exploration for our two children. Like many parents today, we allowed ourselves to be haunted by the ghost of “what if” and the potential horrors that would inevitably befall a child left alone to explore much beyond a one-block radius from our house–or beyond eye- and ear-shot. But exploration can be accomplished in multiple ways. I am fortunate enough to be married to one of the most creative people I know, and she instilled a life-long sense of wonder and awe in our children through a multitude of art projects, construction of imagined worlds, environments and scale models, long hikes, bike rides, snow fort building, scrapbooking, etc. Our children are completely at home in a museum and a public library and have suffered through their share of historic homes and dusty Civil War forts.

So, none the worse for wear are we. And the arts, and I hope a sense of agency, are alive and well!

I recently learned of the following information and feel that it builds nicely on my last two posts: Do the Arts Make Kids Smarter? and The Arts Are Good For… As I have written in earlier posts, studies continue to show the value of the arts as basic in education. This information simply continues the ever-growing body of evidence to support this value in the educational lives of all learners.

Dan Willingham, a cognitive scientist at the University of Virginia and author of Why Don’t Students Like School:  A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What it Means for the Classroom, published an article entitled “Willingham:  Six Practical Reasons Why Arts Education is Not a Mere Luxury” (Washington Post, November 23, 2009). Jerry Kagen, a leading researcher in developmental psychology, presented Willingham’s six reasons at the Neuroeducation: Learning, Arts, and the Brain conference on May 9, 2009. They are summarized here:

• The arts offer students another chance to feel successful, and to feel that they belong at school.
• The arts offer that sense of agency, of creation.
• The arts offer a unique means of communication, using representations in the mind other than words, which are at the core of most school subjects.
• Participation in the arts allows children to see the importance of creating beauty, of creating an object that others may enjoy.
• The arts offer an opportunity for children to work together, for the benefit of others.
• The arts provide a chance for children to express feelings that they otherwise might be unable to express. Such expression reduces illness and increases feelings of well-being.

My next several posts will look more in depth at each of Willingham’s six points.

Left Brain/Right Brain: An Outdated Notion?

For decades, artists, arts educators, and other arts supporters have found the right-brain/left-brain notion useful in drawing distinctions between the creative and not-so-creative among us. Now, I am by no stretch of the imagination an expert on the anatomy and physiology of the brain, but I have to admit to never being very comfortable with this seemingly over-simplistic approach to describing the brain’s complex functioning. It always seemed to me that both hemispheres would, by necessity, function more  harmoniously.

For the past several decades, the classic dichotomy of left-brain/right brain has reigned supreme in our notions of where creativity resides in the brain. But new research is methodically showing the right brain/left brain notion of hemispheric specialization to be over simplistic in its explanation of how the brain works.

Background

The left brain/right brain concept of brain specialization was researched and documented by surgeon Joseph Bogen, Robert Ornstein (author of The Psychology of Consciousness), and psychobiologist Roger Sperry, (winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize in medicine). Their award-winning experiments demonstrated significant differences in the mental capabilities of the brain’s two hemispheres as follows (Scientific American, January 26, 1998):

• Left hemisphere: logical, analytic, quantitative, rational and verbal
• Right hemisphere: conceptual, holistic, intuitive, imaginative and non-verbal

But throughout the 1990s, additional brain research was beginning to draw conclusions that broadened or further informed the left/brain/right brain theory. For example, it was becoming clear that in addition to both hemispheres working together, both halves of the limbic system also come into play. A “whole-brain” theory was being advanced.

Toward a Whole-Brain Model

In a January 1998 article in Scientific American, educator and researcher Ned Herrmann, came to interesting conclusions to support a four-quadrant, whole-brain theory that defined not only the left brain (A, B in above illustration) and right brain (C, D) modes but also the cerebral (A, D) and limbic (B, C) modes. He wrote “Since the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere are massively interconnected (through the corpus callosum), it is not only possible, but also highly likely, that the creative person can iterate back and forth between these specialized modes to arrive at a practical solution to a real problem. If the right hemisphere were somehow disconnected from the left and confined to its own specialized thinking modes, it might be relegated to only ‘soft’ fantasy solutions, pipe dreams or weird ideas that would be difficult, if not impossible, to fully implement in the real world.”

Raise Your Hand if You’re Creative. Either Hand, It Doesn’t Matter

The right hemisphere of the brain is commonly considered the cradle of creativity. But several decades of studies suggest that’s an overly simplistic — dare we say unimaginative? — notion. It now seems clear the creative process is a product of intense interaction between the two hemispheres.

In an August 2009 article, Tom Jacobs (Miller-McCune) discusses the findings of a team led by psychologist Elizabeth Shobe (Richard Stockton College, New Jersey), who examined whether an increase in inter-hemispheric interaction (i.e., the right and left hemispheres exchanging information) would enhance creativity. According to Jacobs, Shobe’s research (Influence of handedness and bilateral eye movements on creativity, ScienceDirect.com, August 2009) reached a couple interesting conclusions. First, that the more creative among us tend to be those without a strong or consistent hand preference, as opposed to those who are strong right- or left-handed. Second, at least in the short term, there appears to be a way to stimulate innovative thinking in those with limited imaginations.

The research showed that “mixed-handers” scored higher than strong right- and left-handed people on each of five creativity scores (appropriateness, detail, categorical distinctiveness, fluency, and originality). Neurological studies dating back to the early 1990s suggest that individuals who strongly favor one hand over the other do not exhibit the same degrees of inter-hemispheric interaction as those with inconsistent hand preferences (e.g., ambidextrous). This supports the idea that creativity results from the intersection of left and right hemispheres (fixed rules meet a world of possibilities). “The right hemisphere of the brain is commonly considered the cradle of creativity. But several decades of studies suggest that’s an overly simplistic — dare we say unimaginative? — notion. It now seems clear the creative process is a product of intense interaction between the two hemispheres” said Jacobs.