MI-News, March 1999, Volume 1, Number 3
Table of Contents
1 Welcome message by Clifford Morris
2 The MIDAS by Clifford Morris
3 The parenting corner by Debra Jones
4 MI learning and care by Ellen Weber
5 Thomas Armstrong's other LD by Clifford Morris
6 For your intelligences only by Clifford Morris1 Welcome message by Clifford Morris
Welcome once again to the March 1999 (Volume 1, Number 3) version of the MI-News. This newsletter is provided free of charge by Multiple Intelligences (MI) Research and Consulting. Our goal is to provide useful information to those interested in Howard Gardner's MI Theory and to explore its applications via discussion, contact and sharing. In exchange for receiving this newsletter, we request that you consider making a contribution in the form of a good idea, thoughtful response, question or an inspirational MI learning activity.
2 The MIDAS by Clifford Morris
Dear readers,
In the inaugural issue of the MI-News (Volume 1, Issue 1, January 1999), an inaccurate inference was made whereby Dr. Branton Shearer's MIDAS was stated to be the sole assessment instrument for the multiple intelligences that was recognized by Howard Gardner for enhancing educational planning and self awareness. That inference was wrong and ought never to have appeared. As the newsletter's editor, I bring this error to your attention and, on behalf of the other member involved in the publication of the MI-News, to extend our apologies to Dr. Howard Gardner for any negative effects which this sentence may have produced.
Here is Howard Gardner's comment on this issue.
Why I Don't Endorse Multiple Intelligences Products and Services by Howard Gardner March 1999
Since the idea of multiple intelligences was first introduced, many individuals have created products and services based on the key points. Often I do not learn about these products and services, or I learn about them only after the fact. At other times, individuals send them to me for comments or criticisms. I appreciate this collegiality and try to be responsive when I can. And in many cases, I have written a word of en encouragement and allowed the statement to be quoted.
I have a long standing policy against endorsement of any commercial product. While I do not expect others to abide by this policy, I believe that the work of a scholar is compromised when he or she becomes identified with a specific product. I am also uncomfortable with the blurring of the line between profit and non-profit undertakings.
At times, my words of encouragement have been mistaken for endorsements. This happened recently in this publication, and I regret its occurrence. I am grateful for this opportunity to set the record straight.
3 Using MI to learn the multiplication tables by Debra Jones
Editorial Introduction
Teaching the multiplication tables can be a long, slow and often laborious task. Many teachers and parents have spent countless hours drilling, memorizing and trying to instill these basic math facts into their children. Writing as a former classroom teacher, I continue to remember specific parent-teacher interviews whereby I would be searching, often unsuccessfully, for another way to tell a parent how best to reteach these tables. I only wished that I knew then what I know now about the "Skip Counting" method, this month's excellent other way of learning the times tables.
Skip counting through the multiplication times tables
Today, as I drove my children to the museum, I could hear them in the back seat reciting the "times table" for 4's. Now, this may not sound so amazing, but my twins are only five (5) years old! So, how do they do it? We have been playing a "Skip Count" cassette in the car every time we commute around town. This wonderful tape has a song to go with each number from 2 to 10 that will have your children reciting the times tables in no time!
What does this all mean? Well, right now at a very early age, this tedious job of memorizing times tables has been turned into fun songs. They do not understand what a times table is yet, and they are nowhere near ready for multiplication, but when they are ready, this part of the process (i.e., memorizing the times tables) will have already been completed. This is especially important for my one daughter, who is not good with memorization. She is a highly logical thinker but she is even higher in her musical intelligence. So, this approach is especially helpful for her. She resists ALL attempts at memorizing things in the traditional way (to get her to learn to spell her name I had to put it to that old Mickey Mouse song from the Mickey Mouse Club; the one that went M-I-C--see you real soon ...).
I think what really sold me on these skip count tapes was a conversation with another mother who used them with her son when he was little. He is now at middle school age, and he complains to his mom that he just can not get those songs out of his head! Whenever he wanted to multiply, those little tunes just came right back to him. As he used them more and more, though, he found he relied on the songs less, and the answers came easier. BUT he didn't have to memorize the tables from scratch. They were already in his head in the form of a song from those early days of listening to the cassette in the car.
I purchased my tape from a company in Texas called Sing 'N' Learn. They have information on the tapes at their web site Sing 'N' Learn. I am sure you can get these tapes from other sources as well. They are put out by Skip Count Kid, 8200 S. W. 130 Street K, Miami, FL. 33156-6652. As an added bonus, I am finding that I too am doing better with my own multiplication now! I guess we are never too young or too old to learn our times table!
4 MI learning and care by Ellen Weber
Editorial Overview
Howard Gardner's interpersonal intelligence is all about person-to-person relationships. This social form of intelligence deals with the relationships that occur between people as they journey through life. This theme became the central focus of a recently received email from Ellen Weber, Director of Secondary Education at Houghton College, Houghton, New York. In what immediately follows, we read her true recollection about Herb Sawyer, a person from her youth.
MI Learning and Care by Ellen Weber
We waited daily as kids for the clomp - pause - clomp - pause. Old Herb Sawyer's ancient nag pulled up from the dump, a wooden cart that looked more like a coal bin than a buggy. Tin cans rattled together and Herb's tiny photographic film spools rolled on rotted boards. We kids ran behind wobbly wheels hoping to collect even one black film spool. Herb collected film parts from the trash and spools trickled through holes in the cart floor onto dirt below. We scooped up these film discards as if to photograph Herb's mysterious world from the viewpoint of a Nova Scotian kid.
This frail hermit coachman, perched up on a rough slab of wood behind his only friend, a horse, added intrigue and mystery that traveled with me for a lifetime. Who were these two partners? Why did man and beast limp daily from the junk yard toward thick woods? Rumor had it Herb's wife died back there giving birth to their first child, a stillborn son.
We knew very little else about this man, who we watched from a safe distance. Herb lived alone somewhere back in groves of spruce and maple trees. I'm not sure exactly where, though, because we were forbidden to follow him home. While I never saw his house, I imagined rotted wood like the rough cart pulled behind him. For years, we waited after school just to catch another glimpse of the man who kept to himself. Nobody greeted Herb, that I remember, we just watched. In fact, the stench from his ragged clothes, which kept a bunch of immature kids at a distance, could hold wild dogs at bay.
Sadly, just as I can still see old Herb and his horse hobble along, I still cringe when I remember a few boys who threw rocks at his cart. Stones sometimes hit the horse, and then you heard a squeal of laughter from the boy who hit his mark. The nag would rear up as far as stiff bones enabled and bolt off, to Herb's mumbled curses.
My regret that I never stood up for Herb or seriously tried to help, keeps alive personal lessons about caring. Maybe no one else felt those rocks hit wood as I did. I never asked. But my feelings or regrets didn't help Herb, either. A lifetime later, I've learned that care travels far enough beyond mere feelings so that others can say, "It's good to know and be known by that person."
Fortunately, even though I let chances to interact meaningfully with Herb pass by, other people continue to enter my world each day. And each one who crosses my path brings another opportunity to relate to, and learn from, another person's life.
Lately I've been thinking more than usual about this silent lesson of time and memories mixed within my soul. Yet, in spite of all Herb taught me, I have to admit that I still miss choice opportunities to practice genuine care for others. My students and colleagues, for example, don't always feel cared for by me. Over time, though, Herb's lesson taught me that care and learning weave together as naturally as hemp fibers braided Herb's old rope harness. I'm speaking about listening to and taking part in another's dreams as deliberately as Herb's old horse and cart hinged them together.
Whenever I've cared genuinely about those with whom I've crossed paths, I've learned from them. Brain specialists now tell us that interactions with people expand interpersonal domains within our brains. Howard Gardner shows how meaningful exchanges with others can unleash interpersonal intelligence. With other people, we develop ability to better understand our own world. I think brain scientists are really saying that by caring more we also learn more about life with all its deeper meanings.
Herb and his nag have long since left this world, and he has moved into the next. But because he lived and traveled along my path, I am reminded to stop and consider care's impact. The other kids discovered their own truths when Herb clomped by, but these were mine.
About the author
Ellen Weber is Director of Secondary Education, at Houghton College, in Houghton, New York 14744. Her phone number is (716) 567-9673 and her email address is eweber@houghton.edu. Her internet web site address is http://www.houghton.edu/depts/education/ellen.htm
5 Thomas Armstrong's other LD by Clifford Morris
Editorial Comment
Twelve years ago, Dr. Thomas Armstrong wrote a book called In Their Own Way. The book was based, in the main, around Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences (MI) model. The book became an instant success and an important guide for parents who believed that their children should be doing better in school. At the time, Mr. Armstrong was a learning disabilities teacher; he found that many of his students were not un-intelligent or learning disabled (LD), as many of them were so labeled, but that their LD title simply suggested that they learned differently (LD). In other words, they worked at a slower pace and processed information in a different way than did other school aged youngsters.
Such ongoing classroom observations led Armstrong to question the validity of the learning disabilities concept and it's LD label and to explore Howard Gardner's more positive way to define an LD student as one who learned differently. Armstrong sought another way to demonstrate that his classroom students possessed different types of 'intelligences' ... intelligences that were not being tapped by the conventional schooling systems. Armstrong thus became one of the first cognitivists to redefine the LD label from 'learning disability' to 'learning differently.' The rest of the story is LD history and need not be repeated here, except for the following two short comments. Since 1987, Armstrong's additional books and articles have assisted numerous parents and teachers to grasp the complex differences among students, to look deeper and see talents they may have been neglected and to create a more nurturing environment that might enhance the development of their many intelligences. Here then is how one teacher has interpreted the Armstrong model.
Special Education and the Real Meaning of LD by Clifford Morris
Most school aged children are different from one another and special in in numerable ways. For example, they may differ i) in terms of their learning abilities and learning styles, ii) by their physical abilities and attributes, and iii) in how they perceive their most dominant and least dominant intelligences. However, students who have been formally identified as special needs learners or exceptional pupils are very special. They differ from most other general level students to such an extent that they often require specialized instruction in a specific program tailored by the school's special services team to meet their needs. Usually, such exceptional learners receive special education or special services because it continues to be the common belief (unfortunately) that such specialization will help these exceptional students reach their fullest potential. I believe that this traditional learning model for special education is incorrect and thus damaging to many special education children. In what follows, I argue against this mainstream practice, and instead suggest a more positive learning model for those special needs youngsters who simply learn differently.
The Glass is Half Empty: LD Only Means Learning Disabilities
The conventional way of grouping special needs youngsters has been according to the prevalence of the exceptionality in the current population. Students so labeled as learning disabled (LD), students with special gifts and students with speech and language problems make up the highest prevalence categories of exceptionality. On the other hand, the different ways of instructing students who learn differently (LD) are less frequently considered. Students so "stamped" by our current schooling systems as learning disabled constitute the largest group of exceptional children within the school-age population. Approximately 4% of schoolchildren aged 6 to 17 have been diagnosed as LD, that label coined initially by Samuel Kirk in 1963 to describe children who were experiencing academic difficulties and who may have been labeled dyslexic, brain injured, perceptually handicapped, neurologically impaired, aphasic, or children with minimal brain dysfunction. Since that time, there have been several definitions for LD. Most generally stated, a learning disability is here defined as a heterogeneous group of disorders that are "manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of reading, writing, reasoning, or mathematical abilities, or of social skills. These disorders are presumed to be due to central nervous dysfunction. Even though a learning disability may occur concomitantly with other handicapping conditions, with socio-environmental influences, and with attention deficit disorder, all of which may cause learning problems, a learning disability is not the direct result of those conditions or influences" (The American National Institutes of Health, 1988).
Typically, a student with such a negative cognitive profile supposedly demonstrates an average or above average intellectual quotient (IQ). However, these students are likely to show specific deficits in thinking procedures, such as memory, attention and perception, as well as difficulties in developing or using strategies to understand or remember what they have read. Those students who have been categorized as "exceptional pupils" have very specific and special learning needs. While the often irregular needs of each special student differ, and programs and services must be determined on an individual basis, some broad generalizations can be nevertheless made. The bottom line in all of this is that once so stamped as LD, a student is supposed to be taught specific learning strategies so that s/he may become more successful in school. One way of approaching this objective is to view the learner differently.
The Glass is Half Full: LD Also Means Learning Differently
In 1963 when Dr. Samuel Kirk initially tossed the LD coin, it landed tails up. He thus interpreted the LD coin as Learning Disability -- a most negative label which has since been stuck to students who encounter serious difficulties learning in the conventional mode. More recently, other cognitive psychologists, including Thomas Armstrong (1988), have tossed the same LD coin into the educational arena and this time it has landed heads up. Here, the special learner is viewed in another way, as a being who simply learns differently. This more positive approach to learning is essentially what Howard Gardner (1993, 1994, 1995, 1999) proposes with his multiple intelligences (MI) concept. By using an MI approach towards special education assessment and programming, there are more a) opportunities for developing children's strengths and achieving mastery, b) time for understanding various domain-specific content areas, and c) provision for improving mainstream forms of assessment.
To see how offspring can be so different from each other, stop reading this commentary and take a minute to think and look at your own children, or other children you know. Are they intelligent in more ways than one: for example, in music, sports, chess, debating, or computer science, to name just a few? The most sensible approach to measuring their talents, skills or gifts would be to recognize the multiplicity of their intelligences (see Gardner 1998) by stating that they may indeed learn differently. However, common sense is not very common!
A growing number of special educators are now believing in this common sense approach -- that many of our classroom youngsters are more often than not simply unaware of their talents on each of the eight intellectual spectrums as proposed by Gardner. As a former teacher, I have so often witnessed such students, who perceived themselves as educational washouts; they failed to realize that they had a learning strength in, at least, one of the Gardner strands. Such students frequently became discouraged and withdrawn. Often, they became aggressive and rebellious to mask their inner feelings of (supposed) weakness, due, in part, to their ignorance of their 'secret' intelligences. While working with such children, I was often reminded of the central theme from Prissilla Vail's (1987) text -- a focus on weaknesses at the expense of developing talents can result in a low level of self-efficacy, an external locus-of-control, a lack of motivation, and even depression.
Thomas Armstrong represents one of those growing number of educators. Twelve years ago, Armstrong (1987b; see also Armstrong 1987a) wrote In Their Own way. Based on Howard Gardner's MI model, the book became an instant success and an important guide for parents who believed that their children should be doing better in school. At the time, Armstrong was a learning disabilities teacher who found that many of his students were not unintelligent or learning disabled as many of them were so labeled, but instead, that their LD title simply suggested to him that they learned differently. In other words, they worked at a slower pace and they processed information in a different way than did other school aged youngsters (Armstrong, 1988).
Such ongoing classroom observations led Armstrong to question the validity of the learning disabilities concept and it's LD label, and instead to explore Gardner's more positive way to define LD students. In other words, Armstrong sought another way to demonstrate that his pupils possessed different types of intelligences, intelligences that were not being tapped by the conventional schooling system. While Armstrong may not have been aware of what he was doing at the time, he became one of the first cognitivists to redefine LD. The rest of the story is LD history and need not be repeated here, except for this final comment. Since 1987, Armstrong's books and articles have assisted numerous parents and teachers to grasp the complex differences among students, to look deeper and see talents they may have neglected and how to develop a more nurturing environment that could enhance the development of their many intelligences (for a more involved discussion, see Armstrong, 1991, 1993a, 1993b, 1994a, 1994b, 1998).
Summary and Conclusion
The final words to this most informal LD debate go to the prominent Yale University cognitivist, Dr. Robert J. Sternberg. In a recent article, where he and his colleagues suggested that teaching for successful intelligences raised school achievement, he stated "when material is taught in a variety of pedagogically sound ways -- in this case, for memory as well as analytically creatively and practically -- students have more opportunities to learn and understand the material being taught. If they do not comprehend the material when it is taught in one way, they might comprehend it when it is taught in another. Thus their achievement is likely to improve" (Sternberg, Torff, & Grigorenko, 1998, p. 668; see also Sternberg, 1997, 1998a, 1998b ). To simply sum up Sternberg's above comment, by teaching students in other ways means that they are learning differently (LD). In my opinion, that is what LD truly means!
References
Armstrong, T. (1987a). Describing strengths in children identified as learning disabled: Using Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences as an organizational framework. (Doctoral dissertation). Dissertation Abstracts, 48. 08A. (University Microfilms No. 87-25, 844)
Armstrong, T. (1987b). In their own way: Discovering and encouraging your child's personal learning style. New York: Tarcher/Putnam.
Armstrong, T. (1988, September). Learning differences -- not disabilities. Principal, 68(1), 34-36. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. EJ 377 480)
Armstrong, T. (1991). Awakening your child's natural genius. Los Angeles, CA.: Jerermy P. Tarcher.
Armstrong, T. (1993a). 7 kinds of smart: Identifying and developing your many intelligences. New York: Plume/Penguin.
Armstrong, T. (1993b, January 23). Seven kinds of smart: The theory of multiple intelligences. Paper presented at the 5th Annual Coastal Conference of The Orton Dyslexia Society.
Armstrong, T. (1994a). Multiple intelligences in the classroom. Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).
Armstrong, T. (1994b, November). Multiple intelligences: Seven ways to approach curriculum. Educational Leadership, 52(3), 26-28.
Armstrong, T. (1998). Awakening Genius in the classroom. Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).
Gardner, H. (1993). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences: Tenth anniversary edition. New York: Basic Books. (Original work published 1983).
Gardner, H. (1994). The Multiple intelligences theory. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human intelligence (Vol. 2, pp. 740-742). New York: Macmillan.
Gardner, H. (1995, Nov.). Reflections on multiple intelligences: Myths and messages. Phi Delta Kappan, 77(3), 200-203, 206-209.
Gardner, H. (1998, Winter). A multiplicity of intelligences. [Special Issue]. Scientific American, 9(4), 18-23.
Gardner, H. (1999, January 25). A prescription for peace. Time, 153(3), pp. 44-45.
Sternberg, R. J. (1997). Successful intelligence: How practical and creative intelligence determine success in life. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Sternberg, R. J. (1998a, Winter). How intelligent is intelligence testing? [Special Issue]. Scientific American, 9(4). 12-17.
Sternberg, R. J. (1998b). Thinking styles. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sternberg, R. J., Torff, B., & Grigorenko, E. (1998, May). Teaching for successful intelligence raises school achievement. Phi Delta Kappan, 79(9), 667-669.
Vail, P. L. (1987). Smart kids with school problems: Things to know and ways to help. New York: Penguin Books.
6 For your intelligences only by Clifford Morris
Mindy Kornhaber's Project SUMIT
In January of 1997, a three-year national investigation titled Schools Using Multiple Intelligence Theory (SUMIT) was launched. The principal Investigator is Dr. Mindy Kornhaber from Harvard University. Briefly stated, during the late winter and early spring of 1997, the SUMIT staff identified schools that had been been using MI for at least three years. They conducted phone interviews with principals and teachers at 41 such schools and administrators from three school districts. During these interviews, educators described how they integrated Howard Gardner's MI model into their curriculum, assessment, professional development and various organizational practices. They also described the outcomes they associate with the use of MI in their schools. To read more about SUMIT, go to Kornhaber's site at http://pzweb.harvard.edu/SUMIT/
Leslie Wilson and MI Lesson Plans
Recently, I placed a plea for lesson plans associated with Howard Gardner's MI model. Thanks to Leslie Wilson we now have access to a site that contains many such plans. To read about these plans, go to her web site at http://www.uwsp.edu/acad/educ/lwilson