Theory: In Education, You Need to Take Account of Different Types of Intelligence
Compiled by Lori Gracey | Excutive Director | TCEA.org
Summary of the Belief: According to Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences first launched in 1983, people possess the ability to process information through different intelligences, with these different intelligences being represented in different parts of the brain.
Points About the Belief:
- Gardner himself said “A myth that irritates me is that people place my intelligences on the same footing as learning styles. Learning styles say something about how people approach everything they do. … My own research and observations lead me to suspect that this is a wrong assumption. If we are talking about multiple intelligences, we mean that we react individually in different ways to different types of content, such as language, music, or other people. This is something completely different from a learning style.”
- From cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham: “Why are we referring to musical, athletic, and interpersonal skills as intelligences. … Great intelligence researchers – Cyril Burt, Raymond Cattell, Louis Thurstone – discussed many human abilities. The difference was that they called them talents or abilities, whereas Gardner has renamed them intelligences.”
- Gardiner makes it impossible to validate these since measurement requires clearly defined components for the intelligences, but he has stated that he will not define such components.
- Another problem is that research has shown that many of the categories of intelligence that Gardner differentiates correlate very highly with each other and thus cannot really be considered to be separate intelligences.
Resources:
- Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
- John White: Multiple Intelligence? It’s a Flaky Theory
- Reframing the Mind
Your Analysis:
Is the theory:
- Myth
- Unproven
- Based on truth
What This Should Mean to Teachers: