Gardner's Multiple Intelligences in our Classrooms:
Students Are Smarter Than We Think Part III (of III)
by Clifford Morris

This is the final of three articles on Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences (MI) theory   In the first two articles, I targeted the current Intelligence Quotient (IQ) method of assessing mental capabilities as outdated for measuring the many mental operations of students.  In opposition to IQ tests, I introduced Gardner's MI Theory as a remedy.  Gardner, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard, rejects the popular view that the intellect is solely a language and logic form of general ability, and readily measurable by the traditional IQ test (Hatch & Gardner, 1986).  In addition to those two current school skills, Gardner argues that cognition contains five further "intelligences": visual-spatial conceptualizations, musical-rhythmic competence, bodily-kinesthetic skills, social-interpersonal abilities, and intrapersonal knowledge (Faggella & Horowitz, 1990).  By placing these talents or gifts on the same cerebral pedestal as logic and language, Gardner feels justified in referring to them as intelligences.  Moreover, Gardner feels that our current schooling practices reward only language and logic; children with strengths in his other five talents are often made to feel stupid.  What follows then are some ways of decreasing this form of student stupidity.

Practical Intelligence Curriculum

Since 1987, Gardner has been engaged in a joint research effort with Robert Sternberg, a psychologist from Yale University.  Together, they have developed a theory based curriculum called Practical-Intelligence-for-School (PIFS) classroom curriculum (Blythe & Gardner, 1990; Olson, 1988; Sternberg et al., 1990).  The intent of their undertaking is to produce a number of curriculum modules that might help "inoculate" students against school failure.  Their "street-smart" or meta-curricular curriculum units are designed to teach skills used across content knowledge areas and can be implanted into the curriculum taught in middle school grades. Their objective is to examine the kinds of fundamental smarts needed by schoolchildren to succeed.

Gardner's Multiple Intelligences in Our Classrooms

In addition to the above pilot project, some elementary schools have started to center their curriculum around Gardner's works.  One such school is The Key School, a kindergarten to grade six public school in downtown Indianapolis.  The school's philosophy of learning is strongly modeled around Gardner's MI theory.  Slow learners and more able students are placed in the same classes.  Opposed to ability grouping, principal Patricia Bolanos groups students in grades 1-3 and in grades 4-6.  The rational for this procedure is that in a non - competitive classroom, the learning of younger pupils is boosted by their older and more-abled classmates.  Remedial work is downplayed as individual strengths and intelligences are fostered.  Term progress is assessed through videotaping of student projects.  When a student reaches grade three, instead of grade marks, parents meet with a member of the school's assessment team to review a variety of learning strengths and cognitive preferences exhibited thus far by the child.  At this time, parents receive a detailed progress report telling how the student is managing in each intelligence and whether motivation comes from within the student or from the teacher (Deitel, 1990).

Scholastic-Based Portfolios in the Classroom

A scholastic portfolio is another way the Key School measure how a student is learning.  This portfolio is a collection of selected student works that serve as the basis for ongoing and continuous evaluation.  Portfolios have been traditionally used in the arts as repositories of the best works fashioned by artists.  Other artisans and writers have always used portfolios to showcase their very best works, but more and more, teachers are turning to Gardner's (1989, 1990) "process- folios" in an effort to better assess what pupils are learning and how well they are learning it.

I have also started to used scholastic portfolios to assess my grade 5/6 students. These portfolios include their own finished projects, including projects in progress, copies of personal art, music, poetry, selections of creative computer programs, samples of their personal inventions, and pictures of their community athletic awards (hockey, baseball, karate, swimming, etc.).   The purpose of this procedure is to help the students understand that any work of art has to go through a period of growth (Vavrus, 1990). Finally, by passing the portfolio on, I am sharing important information with the student's next teacher.

Conclusion and Recommendations

The verdict will be out for some time among educational researchers before assessment tools, such as PIFS curriculum, portfolios, and the whole notion of Multiple Intelligences achieve the standard psychometric goals of "construct validity" and "reliability".  The attractiveness of Howard Gardner's MI Theory is that it provides teachers with some theoretical basis for saying something they may have already hoped would be true: that their students exemplifying different skills -- be it in sport and dance, in music or art, in language or philosophy, in chemistry or calculus -- are really exemplifying just one of several kinds of intelligences.

References

Blythe, T. & Gardner, H.  (1990, April).  A school for all intelligences.  Educational Leadership, 47(3), 33-37.

Deitel, B.  (1990, May 20).  The key to education.  The Louisville Kentucky Courier-Journal, p. 01H.

Faggella, K. & Horowitz, J.  (1990, September).  Different child, different style.  Instructor, 100(2), 49-54.

Gardner, H.  (1989, Winter).  Zero-based arts education: An introduction to arts propel.  Studies in Art Education: A Journal of Issues and Research, 30(2), 71-83.

Gardner, H.  (1990, September).  Art education and human development.  Occasional Paper 3, Los Angeles: The Getty Center for Education in the Arts.

Hatch, T., & Gardner, H.  (1986, February).  From testing intelligence to assessing competencies: A pluralistic view of intellect.  Roeper Review, 8(3), 147-150.

Olson, B.  (1988, January 27).  Children flourish here.  Education Week, 7(18), pp. 1, 18-19.

Sternberg, R. J., Okagaki, L., & Jackson, A. S.  (1990, September).  Practical intelligence for success in school.  Educational Leadership, 48(1), 35-39.

Vavrus, L.  (1990, August).  Put portfolios to the test.  Instructor, 100(1), 48-53.

Note: The above article, originally published in 1992 when the author was a grade 5/6 classroom teacher, has been slightly revised and updated.

home | Most recently revised on Wednesday, 21 July, 2004