Carnine 1990

Carnine, Douglas. 1990. "New Research on the brain: Implications for instruction." Phi Delta Kappan 71(5):372–377.

Gerald Edelman's recent work on the capacity of the human brain to categorize in connected ways has direct implications for educators and may be a key to understanding individual differences. Since the late nineteenth century, the notion of localization of brain function influenced many educators. Current learning styles movement associates specific cerebral locations with their various functions (auditory, visual, and tactile) which are considered areas of strength or weakness. Once a student's areas of strength are identified, instructional methods are matched accordingly.

Edelman, a Nobel laureate and director of the Neurosciences Institute at Rockefeller University, challenges this simplified view of localization. Carnine quotes Rosenfield's description of Edelman's view of the brain (Edelman, Neural Darwinism: The theory of neuronal group selection, New York Basic Books, 1987). Rosenfield summarizes the central procedures in Edelman's scheme of categorization and recategorization in perception, recognition, and memory. People perceive stimuli depending on how they are categorized relative to other stimuli. People recognize things by categorizing or correlating samples of stimuli and become more capable of categorizing by noting samenesses; not by simply storing images.

Carnine notes flaws in the notion that individual learning styles stem from strengths and weaknesses in brain functions. Concludes that "arguing by analogy from brain research to education provides only a rationale for an approach. The actual effect of the approach on students is what is crucial.... Edelman's new research on the brain provides a strong rationale for the analysis of sameness, which has extensive research support" (page 377).

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