Right- and left-brained learning

By Sanders Kleinfeld

In Head First Land, we aim to provide "learning for the way your brain works." Sounds good, right? We know how your brain works.

But the dirty little secret is that we really have no idea how your brain works.

Maybe you learn best through well-written textual explanations. Or maybe, for you, a picture is literally worth a thousand words, and you learn best from diagrams and illustrations of concepts. Are you one of those people who insists on reading a magazine from front to back, and wouldn't think of skipping an article. Or would you rather flip through the glossy pages aimlessly until you hit on something that strikes your interest?

I've just described a couple of the fundamental differences in learning styles between right-brained and left-brained learners. Left-brainers, people whose learning style is dominated by the left hemisphere of the brain, tend to thing linguistically and sequentially. Right-brainers, on the other hand, are better at processing information intuitively and when it is presented visually. (Want to see if you've got a dominant hemisphere? Take this Hemisphere Dominance Inventory hosted by Middle Tennessee State University to get a better idea of how your brain works.)

At Head First, our solution to the left-vs.-right dilemma is not to take sides or tailor our teaching to one side of the brain. (We are staunchly opposed to discrimination on the basis of hemispheric orientation.) Instead, we strive to activate both sides of the brain on every page of our books, juxtaposing text and visual, presenting information linearly and haphazardly.

We may not know how your brain works, but we do believe that we've got something for everyone and that the more variety we offer in presentation styles, the better we can jam that learning into your cerebrum. And, really, why be content to let a hemisphere just languish, lounging about lazily in your skull, when you can engage in a full-brain workout?

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