Marina, until now I never heard of this concept. I read the webpage you referenced and the concept is very interesting. However, I am not aware of any school that uses this concept. I think it will take a very long time to change traditional methods of teaching. After reading the webpage, I realized that I use at least some of this methodology in teaching my students here on italki. I don't have a single or strict method of teaching. I try to teach what my students want to learn and in the way that they want to learn.

Hi Marina, I've looked at the article and two things that jumped out at me are: the brain is social the brain learns by patterning There is a very brain friendly course called English Out There that I sometimes teach with my students which relies on these two principles. It can be found at EnglishOutThere.com It is based on the principle that language learning should be a social activity, so italki is a perfect place to work through this course. In each lesson you can learn some language about a topic and then find some language partners to practice the language with on italki. It is important to record the conversations and go back over them several times, this way your brain learns to absorb the patterns of naturally spoken English. I'm interested in facilitating this course for people (helping them go through the course with self study) so if you take a look at it and like it please contact me. As far as your question goes. Yes I do think it is a problem, because with all the advances in cognitive science like Neuro Linguistic Programming, the development of mind mapping and cognitive therapies, you would have thought that more progress would have been made in teaching methods. I mean, we got to the moon decades ago, but we still have people leaving school functionally illiterate (unable to read two and three syllable words). When I was at school the geography teacher would sit at the front of the class and dictate to us the whole lesson, then she'd ask us to memorize the lesson. Things have changed a lot since then but advances in mind-friendly learning strategies are still in the domain of self development courses for business people and haven't truly filtered down into mainstream education.

Check out Waldorf Education for a different approach.:)

Hi Marina I had a quick look ( prompted by your message) at the web page and at first glance, this theory seems to mirror the Social Practice Approach, which is the approach used here in Scotland for Adult Education in the Community, and the method in which I have been trained, for both ESL and Adult Literacies. ( Some similar ideas are also incorporated in the recently introduced Curriculum for Excellence, in Scottish high schools, although in this instance my experience is rather as a parent) Please message me and we can discuss it further if you like. Interesting topic :-)

Hello, there. While I haven't heard the terminology "brain-based teaching", after having read the article, I can say that it reflects the current pedagogy in U.S. public schools. Helping students make connections to prior knowledge is considered "best practice". The "patterning" mentioned in the article you referenced is probably strongly related to making connections. We try to focus on immersion quite a bit in our school. In fact, we have a School of Inquiry, which is project-based learning. Although as an individual I think that aptly-used lecture is a legitimate way to deliver information, our schools frown upon it so I try not to rely on it too heavily. We also try to consider the student's learning styles and deliver the material in a variety of ways so as to meet the needs of all. I don't think any one methodology is perfect for every learner, but the better schools here are leaning towards some of the things mentioned in the article. Thank you for sharing, and please feel free to send more questions my way.