Mirror Neurons, a fairly recent and very exciting discovery within the brain, addresses the ability of the brain to interface cognition and affect in the service of "learning, attention, memory, decision-making, and social functioning". The fascinating work of Antonio Damasio and Mary Helen Immordino Yang offers insight into the workings of these "as if" neurons and their connection to emotional thought. Their theories push the envelope by offering an exciting model of learning where the learners feelings about what they are learning are as relevant as what they are learning.
As teachers of art and artists we know that learning is not divorce from emotions, mind is not separate from body. Why does our society and education see learning as sectioned from feelings. If fact, if student's feeling life is activated, learning is deeper and more impassioned. Discoveries in neuroscience, in particular mirror neurons, can help set the stage for a more balanced curriculum with the arts as equal partners to other disciplines. Arts integration becomes a key venue for generating understanding, analysis, evaluation and creating as defined by 21st Century skills. Research on arts integration (Nick Rabkin and Robin Redmond [Ed.}, Putting the arts in the picture: Reframing education in the 21st Century, 2004) continues to support this powerful learning model as a process of bringing together two disciplines to advance knowledge and skills in both and engaging learners in authentic intellectual work. For integration to occur each discipline must be valued equally and studied in a way that invites inquiry, challenges students to address real-world standards of craftsmanship, and work in depth to apply knowledge to new situations or settings (p. 25).
The arts may be the mirror we need to view ourselves as an integrated being with emotional thought who attends to the world more fully, recalls more deeply, and makes socially conscious decisions that improve both ourselves and others.
