The Personal Intelligences: Promoting Social and Emotional Learning by Launa Ellison ¹

Book review by Cliff Morris

This book review comments on Launa Ellison's excellent (2001) book The Personal Intelligences: Promoting Social and Emotional Learning ... or as I prefer to call Howard Gardner's two social intelligences, the intuitive / introspective / intrapersonal intelligence and the social / interpersonal intelligence.  I comment as one who spent 32 years as a classroom teacher and elementary school principal.

This book represents a novel insight into the practical implications of Gardner's two personal intelligences and how these two (2) social graces underpin so much of today's classroom learning.  Moreover, the book provides contemporary educators with a unique opportunity to create optimal learning environments for all types of students.  Writing as one who has been following the writing of Gardner since 1985, I feel that this book is also a must read for anyone seeking meaningful insight into their own personal life.

Throughout the book's 194 pages, Ellison utilizes her "class of 25 fifth and sixth graders" (p. 94), consisting "of 11 girls and 14 boys" (p. 94), as a model of reflective teaching practice.  Her Minneapolis, Minnesota elementary school classroom is composed of a wide range of learners: students from families of multiple parents, children from a diverse range of socio-economic backgrounds, as well as "families created by adoption" (p. 94).  I especially appreciated how she spoke to the interest of the practicing classroom teacher, including her wealth of academic activities, teaching strategies, and meaningful interpersonal strategies.  The following classroom themes permeated this fine professional development text.

1. Gardner's social and intuitive intelligences foster a stronger school curricula
2. Learning can be an independent and self-directed cerebral process
3. Many pupils tend to learn in a variety of different fashions and ways
4. Student feelings have an important impact on classroom concepts
5. The emotions and stress of all pupils can be controlled and nurtured

I particularly enjoyed reading how the author who "began teaching in 1964" (p. xiii) focused in on the relevance of social emotional learning.  This is an important skills and often neglected by the busy classroom instructor.  Perhaps Allison best sums up the overall tone of the book with this opening paragraph from the final chapter.  As I can not match Ellison's prose, I shall now quote her directly:

In this book, I have detailed the critical importance of Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Intelligences as the foundation for learning.  This included understanding cause and effect in order to make good choices.  It includes internal self-talk, which evaluates the potential outcomes of actions.  Personal intelligence includes understanding one's strengths and admitting one's weaknesses.  It includes self-management -- of thought, food, sleep, and exercise.  It acknowledges the body brain system as one system, respected as an integral whole, impacting learning and thinking (p. 158, emphases in bold type are the reviewer's alone and not those of the author).

As I read the book's nine (9) chapters, I was constantly being reminded of Richard Prawat's comment on what has become Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky's best known theory, namely "the notion that mental development is an 'outside-in' process" (see Prawat, 2000, p. 676).  I saw Ellison's efforts to be somewhat similar, in that her classroom students also required tremendous "public" or "outer" guidance and assistance from her, before their "private" or "inner" classroom potential was able to be readily observed.  More to that latter point, Ellison skillfully weaves the latest research on the brain and human learning throughout the text and models reflective practice throughout.  I found her language to be quite conversational and thus easy to comprehend, most practical, and speaking to the interests of current classroom teachers.

The Personal Intelligences contains an excellent annotated bibliography on books connecting to the two personal intelligences, useful teaching guides, resources lists, as well as numerous teaching strategies and activities.  Of personal interest was a reproducible Week in Review checklist whereby students would think back about their past week's classroom activities by reading 16 statements and then placing a check in one of four columns ("All of the time", "Most of the Time", "Some of the Time", or "Never") that best described how they felt at the end of the week.

If there is any weakness in the book, it is slight and it lies within the final three chapters.  Here Ellison stumbles somewhat in her attempt to address the diverse nature of how a student's strength in any of Howard Gardner's six (6) additional intelligences might be utilized to facilitate limitations in the two (2) personal intelligences.  At the outset of the book, she suggests that "Gardner provide[s] the framework to identify and value the wide and wonderful range of smarts." (p. 15).  Elsewhere, there is minute elaboration to this critical issue.  Long-standing followers of Gardner's 20 years of writings, this retired state-funded teacher included, will find little throughout the book addressing this issue.

Nevertheless, The Personal Intelligences is a must read professional development book for all educators, in particular, classroom teachers concerned about the social graces of students -- so critical today when school violence so often stems from a lack of improving learning by understanding emotional learning.

I especially enjoyed reading her detailed and practical description of how i) student emotions impact overall classroom learning, ii) the interpersonal and the intrapersonal intelligences can be weaved into the curriculum, iii) Gardner's two personal intelligences can be used to nurture self-directed and independent learning, iv) social and emotional learning can decrease classroom stress and student emotions, and v) to teach more effectively using self-reflective strategies.  For all of these serious and relevant issues, Ellison is to be commended.

To sum, I found The Personal Intelligences to be an excellent insight into how an experienced grade five and six classroom teacher has been able to weave innovative and practical strategies into two (2) of Gardner's more criticized intelligences.  More to that point, this new insight into Gardner's two personal intelligences and how it underpins all classroom learning provides classroom instructors a unique chance to create optimal learning environments for children.  Laune, please continue such fine teachings and writings!

Note

¹ To find out more about this book, including its current cost, click on the book's front cover image.

Reference

Prawat, R. S.  (2000, Fall).  Dewey meets the "Mozart of Psychology" in Moscow: The untold story.  American Educational Research Journal, 37(3), 663-696.

 

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Most recently revised on: Friday, 15 September, 2006 

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