/ 15 January 2007

Harness brain power

Acclaimed educationalist Dr Melodie de Jager has a mission in life: to remove barriers to learning. She passionately believes that to achieve their full potential, learners have to stimulate whole brain functioning. She has detailed her ideas and research in her latest book Mind Moves: Removing Barriers to Learning.

The book examines reasons for development and learning problems in children and provides hands-on, constructive solutions in an easy-to-follow manual.

Issues dealt with include specific barriers to learning, be they socio-economic, emotional, gender or integration barriers. The book examines exactly what learning and intelligence are and looks at distinctive areas of the brain — survival, emotional and thinking brain — and what can be done to get them to function as a whole.

Says De Jager: ‘When the brain hemispheres do not work together as a team, the brain is like a horse-drawn cart being pulled by two horses running in different directions. It becomes unsettled and this creates barriers to learning. Just as you would not expect someone with a broken leg to climb a mountain, you cannot expect learners to help and change themselves.”

De Jager is a qualified nursery school teacher who completed a master’s degree in science and maths programmes, and a doctorate on the role of neurological integration in the learning process. She was nominated by the American Biographical Institute as one of the Great Women of the 21st Century.

She qualified as a Brain Gym/Edu K trainer in 1992 and expanded her career over the next eight years to include corporate training. She has written three previous books.

Mind Moves: Removing Barriers to Learning is published by BG ConneXion (Pty) Ltd