How to give your students more intelligence(s) at teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk

WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at dougbelshaw.com...

And so it begins… Today marks the start of An Idiots’ Guide to Multiple Intelligences about Prof. Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences. This first part looks at what the theory is and what it means for educators.

Gardner posits that there are eight types of ‘intelligence’:

Linguistic
Logical-mathematical
Spatial
Musical
Bodily-kinaesthetic
Interpersonal
Intrapersonal
Naturalistic

As far as possible, I’m going to let Gardner speak to you in his own words. So here goes…

There is persuasive evidence for the existence of several relatively autonomous human intellectual competencies or ‘frames of mind’. The exact nature of each intellectual frame has not so far been satisfactorily established, nor has the precise number been fixed. But the conviction is that there exist at least some intelligences, and that these are relatively independent of each other.H. Gardner, Frames of Mind (1983) - quoted in P. Ginnis, The Teachers’ Toolkit (2002), p.46

Howard Gardner

…intelligences are not things that can be seen or counted. Instead they are potentials - presumably, neural ones - that will or will not be activated, depending on the values of a particular culture, the opportunities available in that culture, and the personal decisions made by individuals and/or their families, school teachers and others.H. Gardner, Intelligence Reframed (1999) - quoted in P. Ginnis, The Teachers’ Toolkit (2002), p.47

Multiple Intelligences

Even as all humans possess and exhibit these [multiple intelligences], the intelligences also serve to distinguish from one another. Individuals possess varying amounts of these intelligences and combine and use them in personal and idiosyncratic ways. Just as we all look different and exhibit different personalities, we all possess different kinds of minds.H. Gardner, The Unschooled Mind (1991), p.81

The problem, states Gardner, is when a teacher is faced with a class which has students with multiple intelligences that combine in many and various ways:

So long as the classroom contains one teacher with thirty or forty students and a single textbook, it may be necessary to teach all students in the same way. (Only a teacher of great talent and formidable energy can afford to invidiualize instruction at so unfavorable a teacher-student ratio.)H. Gardner, The Unschooled Mind (1991), p.244

However, approaching topic in different ways allows for these different ‘intelligences’ to come into play:

My own belief is that any rich, nourishing topic - any concept worth teaching - can be approached in at least five different ways that, roughly speaking, map onto the multiple intelligences. We might think of the topic as a room with at least five doors or entry points into it. Students vary as to which entry point is most appropriate for them and which routes are most comfortable to follow once they have gained initial access to the room.H. Gardner, The Unschooled Mind (1991), p.245

To this end, Gardner quotes Philipp Frank talking about Albert Einstein:

When Einstein had thought through a problem, he always found it necessary to formulate this subject in as many different ways as possible and to present it so that it would be comprehensible to people accustomed to different modes of thought and with different educational preparations. He liked to formulate his ideas for mathematicians, for experimental physicists, for philosophers, and even for people without much scientific thinking, if they were at all inclined to think independently.quoted in H. Gardner, The Unschooled Mind (1991), p.245

A cottage industry has grown up around Multiple Intelligence theory - just as it does around any buzzwords or phrases in education. Some of this is rubbish, some useful. Here are some titles I recommend for further implementation in lesson planning and embedding into ones pedagogy:

Paul Ginnis’ The Teacher’s Toolkit is one of the best books any teacher could own. Fun, stimulating and meaningful activities tied to behaviour management strategies and pedagogy-enhancing discussion (including Multiple Intelligences). A must.

In Multiple Intelligences: Best Ideas from Theory and Practice, Howard Gardner introduces some teaching and learning activities linked to his theory of Multiple Intelligences.

Having first written about his theory of Multiple Intelligences in the early 80’s, Howard Gardner discusses in Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century how his theory has been applied to, and changed, the educational landscape. He answers some of his critics and gives examples of how Multiple Intelligences can work for you, in your classroom.

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