Location: Australia Posts: 1163 Joined: 2005-03-20
Gardner's "Multiple Intelligences"
Summary prepared by Po-Ching Wang
Howard Gardner, a Harvard psychologist, won a MacArthur Foundation genius grant in 1981. It was Gardner's 1983 book "Frames of Mind" that inspired the "Key Crew" to develop the theoretical framework for the Key School.
"Gardner's theory seemed to match what we'd observed about students," says intermediate teacher Sharon Smith. "It seemed right to us intuitively."
Dr. Howard Gardner.
What is Multiple Intelligences?
Gardner attacks the notion of generalized intelligence, identifying instead seven intelligences, or areas of intellectual competence. Intelligence according to Gardner, can be broken down into the following forms: Vernal/Linguistic, Logical/Mathematical, Visual/Spatial, Body/Kinesthetic, Music/Rhythmic, Interpersonal, and Intrapersonal.
Multiple Intelligences: 7 ways of knowing
Verbal/Linguistic
This intelligence, which is related to words and language--written and spoken--dominates most Western educational systems.
Logical/Mathematical Intelligence
Often called "scientific thinking," this intelligence deals with inductive and deductive thinking/reasoning, numbers and the recognition of abstract patterns.
Visual/Spatial Intelligence
This intelligence, which relies on the sense of sight and being able to visualize an object, includes the ability to create internal mental images/pictures.
Body/Kinesthetic Intelligence
This intelligence is related to physical movement and the knowing/wisdom of the body, including the brain's motor cortex, which controls bodily motion.
Musical/Rhythmic Intelligence
This intelligence is based on the recognition of tonal patterns, sounds, and on a sensitivity to rhythm and beats.
Interpersonal Intelligence
This intelligence operates primarily through person-to person relationships and communication.
Intrapersonal Intelligence
This intelligence relates to inner states of being, self-reflection, metacognition (i.e., thinking about thinking) and awareness of spatial realities.
It looks like my only deficit is in Logical/Mathematical Intelligence, and, even there, it's only in the area of mental mathematical calculation. I'm good with inductive and deductive reasoning and with recognition of abstract patterns.
Edited by GaryR55 on January 27 2008 11:20 PM
Fox McCloud wrote:
Even though I have scotopic sensitivity syndrome/irlen's syndrome, Im still a visual learner according to a test my geography teacher did with us.
Hey Fox,same here, I'm a visuallearner too.
I learned something not very long ago; it would seem that visual learning style is the most common learning style of all (about 60% or something like that)
I'm inclined to believe having a deficit would somewhat influence your learning style but the other way around is not true.
Think of this as in terms of right or left handed terms; Everyone has got two hands (unless you are handicaped) Everyone can use both hands but everyone has a favorite hand, either the right hand (most common) or the left - But being right or left handed doesn't stop youfrom using the other hand from time to time.There are a lot of things that require the use of both hands, like driving a car, playing a musical instrument, carrying large objects, etc.
The point that I want to get to is that most of us were born with the possibility of using both hands and the liberty of chosing which hand, right or left, you prefer using - But take forinstance someone who was born one-handed and let's pretend this person is missing a right hand. This person is definately going to be left handed but not because he really favors that hands, it's because he's got no other choice obviously If that person was born with two hands, maybe who knows,he would have prefered being right handed? But that's not the case, this person only has a left hand, therefore thisperson did not have the choice toadapt and learned to be left handed.
Now, to put things into your perspective; You were born with the possibility of learning various ways and you can learn in various ways, but the one that you favoris visual learning style - It also turns-out that you have a little bit of a 'defect', you have SSS, a visual perception deficit - It doesn't mean that you can't see as in, you are not blind, but when it comes for specific tasks, perhaps reading for instance. Because of your visual perception deficit, reading becomes more difficult, asks for more efforts or concentration resulting in that for this type of task, your favored visual learning style isn't optimal... so like the one-handed person, you have nochoice but to adapt, you compensate. Perhaps that you would learn better if the text was being read out loud to you... So you have developped you aural/verbal learning style more, not by choice really, but because you had to find a way to adapt.
In another thread (Which I can't find no more... sorry dawn), dawn asked me how come I said that dyscalculia counts (sorry no pun intended) certain advantages which I said outweights the disadvantages... Well, this is an example - We end-up developping more of our other abilities which we would have never developped if we had not been dyscalculic - The thing is, we don't always realise this.
Edited by Toe_Nail on January 28 2008 03:56 AM
It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer-- Albert Einstein
Location: Texas USA Posts: 3703 Joined: 2008-05-25
7/17/10
This is a YouTube video where, Howard Gardner, the author of Five Minds for the Future speaks on the Multiple Intelligence Theory (MI Theory). It's very short. - jus' http://www.youtub...EFpaY3GI-I
Location: Texas USA Posts: 3703 Joined: 2008-05-25
7/30/10
This site has the list of seven 'multple intelligences', plus checklists to see which are one's 'strong points'. While reading the checklists, the meaning of each 'intelligence' begins to clear up. - jus' http://www.spannj...ndix_b.htm
Location: United States Posts: 1481 Joined: 2008-11-14
Jus - Thanks for the link to the site, I took the quiz and it was interesting. I ended up getting 5/5 in both the Linguistic and Musical categories, 3/5 in Spatial, and 1/5 in Logical/Mathematical and Bodily/Kinesthetic. I also scored 2/2 in Intrapersonal and 3/3 in Interpersonal.
What I found interesting, though, was reading the descriptions on the "Checklist for Assessing Students' Multiple Intelligences." I of course fit all the criteria for Linguistic, which I scored highly in, but I also fit many of the criteria for Logical/Mathematical even though I scored very low on that in the quiz. I think that is because most of the quiz questions asked how well or how much you liked manipulating numbers, which of course I hate, but there is a whole logical aspect that wasn't really addressed in the quiz that is an important part of logical/mathematical learning.
For example, I would say that I fit the bill for " asks a lot of questions about how things work", " enjoys working on logic puzzles or brain teasers", " enjoys putting things in categories or hierarchies", "likes to experiment in a way that shows higher order cognitive thinking processes" (as I took all honors-level sciences in high school and enjoyed them very much), "thinks on a more abstract or conceptual level than peers" (have always scored highly in those areas on tests), and "has a good sense of cause-effect for age", which is part of fluid reasoning which I scored very highly on on my LD test.
The same is true of the Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence checklist. I would say that I enjoy or exhibit every single one of the items on that checklist, and yet I only scored 1 of 5 on that part of the multiple intelligences quiz. I think that is because the quiz asked a lot about how well coordinated you are, how much you enjoy sports, if you have good balance, etc. I don't have great balance, but that doesn't mean I'm not a hands-on learner.
It looks like, once again, we dyscalculics defy the tests given to us to assess our skills!
"The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings." - Eric Hoffer
Yes thank you for the link Justfoundout !
It was really interesting for me. I had 5/5 in Linguistic, 1/5 in Logical, 5/5 in Musical, 1/5 in Spatial, 1/2 in Intrapersonal, 0 in Bodily and 3/3 in Interpersonal.
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If that person was born with two hands, maybe who knows,he would have prefered being right handed? But that's not the case, this person only has a left hand, therefore thisperson did not have the choice toadapt and learned to be left handed.
