Mind the Gap: Beyond Whole-brain learning

Abstract

In past research we 1 have demonstrated how methodologies used in the training of performers can both encourage whole-brain learning and answer to the demands of South Africa’s current educational paradigm, outcomes-based education (OBE). OBE is a needs-driven, outcomes-driven and competency-orientated pedagogy, which aims at incorporating learners as active agents within the learning process as opposed to the previous content-driven, teacher-orientated approach to education (Coetzee 2004). Our research was prompted by the constant need for our Drama departments to validate their existence in the light of changing funding structures for the arts, governmental and institutional demands for measured outcomes and our institutions’ emphasis on wholebrain learning as the preferred pedagogical approach to education and training. We explored the ways in which the changes in the South African educational dispensation impact on the work of educators within a Drama department in the Higher Education and Training band (HET) in South Africa. These changes include a focus on competencies and critical outcomes across learning areas and across the qualification bands identified by the new National Qualifications Framework. In our search for ways in which to implement the critical outcomes 2 demanded by the OBE framework, we turned to Herrmann’s argument (1995) that optimal, deep structure learning can only take place when whole-brain modes are operative. Our investigations were supported by research undertaken by De Boer, Steyn and Du Toit (2001:192) in which they indicated compatibility between the processes associated with each of the four modalities that constitute whole-brain learning and the processes associated with reaching OBE’s critical outcomes as demonstrated in Table 1 on the next page.