multiple intelligence: Uses and implication in education

Multiple Intelligence: Its uses and implication in Education
Abstract
An overview of Gardner’s theory on Multiple Intelligences is presented. This is shown to question and challenge the current bias of schooling towards language and logic. Some implementations of the theory are also considered, and general educational implications of the theory summarised. Theory of Multiple Intelligences has several implications for teachers in terms of classroom instruction. The theory states that all seven intelligences are needed to productively function in society. Teachers, therefore, should think of all intelligences as equally important. This is in great contrast to traditional education systems which typically place a strong emphasis on the development and use of verbal and mathematical intelligences. Thus, the Theory of Multiple Intelligences implies that educators should recognize and teach to a broader range of talents and skills. Another implication is that teachers should structure the presentation of material in a style which engages most or all of the intelligences. If so, this kind of presentation not only excites students about learning, but it also allows a teacher to reinforce the same material in a variety of ways. By activating a wide assortment of intelligences, teaching in this manner can facilitate a deeper understanding of the subject material. Since everyone is born possessing the seven intelligences, all students will come into the classroom with different sets of developed intelligences. This means that each child will have his own unique set of intellectual strengths and weaknesses. In this regard, teacher should be smart enough to identify the area of smartness of the child and treat accordingly.
Background of the study I personally feel that parents and teachers have recognized for years that different children learn in different ways. I being a teacher working for seventeen years too identified the children that excel in very specific areas while that same child can be challenged to complete other activities. It challenged me that there is a need to study the child in deeper level to explore their areas of potentiality and try to nourish it so that they will be valued one way or the other. In doing so, no one will be left behind. Since we need the expert of all the areas and we know that one individual cannot be the expert of all areas, there is a great challenge to us; the educators to foster all the areas of intelligence among our children. In doing so, we will be preparing competent manpower with their areas of interest as well. Therefore to know about it, I took the help of “The theory of Multiple Intelligences” which was developed by Howard Gardner of Harvard University in 1983. This theory has particularly strong implications in the classroom, because if we can identify children 's different strengths among these intelligences, we can accommodate different children more successfully according to their orientation to learning.
What is Multiple Intelligence? First of all before getting into Multiple Intelligence, we must know about what Intelligece is? And then we will be able to discuss about what Multiple Intelligence is? According to (wikipedia, 2013), intelligence is derived from the Latin verb intelligere. A form of this verb, intellectus, became the medieval technical term for understanding, and a translation for the Greek philosophical term nous. This term was however strongly linked to the metaphysical and cosmological theories of teleological scholasticism, including theories of the immortality of the soul, and the concept of the Active Intellect (also known as the Active Intelligence). This entire approach to the study of nature was strongly rejected by the early modern philosophers such as Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and David Hume, all of whom preferred the word "Understanding” in their English philosophical works. Hobbes for example, in his Latin De Corpore, used "intellectusintelligit" (translated in the English version as "the understanding understandeth") as a typical example of a logical absurdity. The term "intelligence" has therefore become less common in English language philosophy, but it has later been taken up (with the scholastic theories which it now implies) in more contemporary psychology. According to the Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia; Intelligence has been defined in many different ways including logic, abstract thought, understanding, self-awareness, communication, learning, having emotional knowledge, retaining, planning, and problem solving. Intelligence is most widely studied in humans, but has also been observed in other animals and in plants. Artificial intelligent is the simulation of intelligence in machines. Within the discipline of psychology, various approaches to human intelligence have been adopted. The psychometric approach is especially familiar to the general public, as well as being the most researched and by far the most widely used in practical settings.
In 1983, Howard Gardner, the creator of the Multiple Intelligent (MI) Theory, suggested that all individuals have personal intelligence profiles that consist of combination of seven different intelligence type. These intelligence were verbal- linguistic, mathematical-logical, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical-rhythmic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. (Gardner, 1983& 1993) added an eight intelligence type to the list, naturalist intelligent (Gardner, 1999) followed by a ninth type, existentialist intelligence. Since 1983, when Howard Gardner published Frames of Mind, multiple intelligences theory has been embraced by educators as a tool for understanding and effectively meeting the learning needs of their students (Armstrong, 1993 & 1994). Gardner’s MI Theory has also been applied to foreign-language teaching and learning by many scholars including (Berman, 1998 &Tanner, 2001).
Multiple intelligences in general practices.
Gardner says that our schools and culture focus most of their attention on linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence. We esteem the highly articulate or logical people of our culture. However, Gardner says that we should also place equal attention on individuals who show gifts in the other intelligences: the artists, architects, musicians, naturalists, designers, dancers, therapists, entrepreneurs, and others who enrich the world in which we live. Unfortunately, many children who have these gifts don’t receive much reinforcement for them in school. Many of these kids, in fact, end up being labelled "learning disabled," "ADD (attention deficit disorder," or simply underachievers, when their unique ways of thinking and learning aren’t addressed by a heavily linguistic or logical-mathematical classroom. The theory of multiple intelligences proposes a major transformation in the way our schools are run. It suggests that teachers be trained to present their lessons in a wide variety of ways using music, cooperative learning, art activities, role play, multimedia, field trips, inner reflection, and much more good news is that the theory of multiple intelligences has grabbed the attention of many educators around the country, and hundreds of schools are currently using its philosophy to redesign the way it educates children. The bad news is that there are thousands of schools still out there that teach in the same old dull way, through dry lectures, and boring worksheets and textbooks. The challenge is to get this information out to many more teachers, school administrators, and others who work with children, so that each child has the opportunity to learn in ways harmonious with their unique minds.
The theory of multiple intelligences also has strong implications for adult learning and development. Many adults find themselves in jobs that do not make optimal use of their most highly developed intelligences (for example, the highly bodily-kinaesthetic individual who is stuck in a linguistic or logical desk-job when he or she would be much happier in a job where they could move around, such as a recreational leader, a forest ranger, or physical therapist). The theory of multiple intelligences gives adults a whole new way to look at their lives, examining potentials that they left behind in their childhood (such as a love for art or drama) but now have the opportunity to develop through courses, hobbies, or other programs of self-development.
Implication of Multiple Intelligences in Education
Most of the schools today in general have honoured linguistic and logical abilities, but have given relatively small recognition to other abilities. Whilst this may be a reflection of our current societal needs, for example a perception for more scientists and engineers rather than dancers, it is quite conceivable that some students are being prevented in achieving natural or perhaps innate abilities.
Furthermore, the teaching approach for any given task is unlikely to be optimal if the particular strengths (intelligences) of the student are not utilised in the learning process. This would then suggest that it may be possible to teach, for example, mathematics through a mixed media involving music, physical activity, language and pictorial depictions, so as to appeal to the spectrum of intelligences of the classroom. Such realisations by the educational community have been acted upon enthusiastically, particularly in some elementary (junior) schools in North America (Thompson, 1999). What are the possible consequences on students of persevering with an educational system which may be giving poor recognition of the wide spectrum of human abilities? In other words, what are the implications of denying attention to student abilities outside that which is driven by typical assessment criteria? An important issue which may arise here is that teacher learning objectives may not be perceived as relevant by the student, and thus little motivation by the student towards the learning task. Alternatively, the task may be perceived by the student as a threat to the self-concept through, for example, the exposure of a weak intelligence, thus resulting in low self-esteem. Low self-esteem in turn, of course, may be manifested through behavioural or anxiety problems (Lawrence, 1996). However, even if low self-esteem issues do not arise, then it is possible that issues of job dissatisfaction or poor personal fulfilment may in later life. For example, an individual who is driven towards scholastic achievement may continue on a similar career path, even if such a path is against the natural intelligence(s) of the individual.
If Gardner’s theory is to be accepted then, what can be done in an educational context? Through studies on US high schools, (Weber, 1995) has suggested some general changes needed for the successful implementation of Multiple Intelligences ideas: • School authorities must alter the way in which curricula are viewed, and in particular flexibility introduced to address different student abilities; i.e. a recognition that students learn in different ways • Broader assessment methods are needed which are not confined to memory or written-test orientations • An integrated and thematic approach to teaching is needed which builds on the prior knowledge of the student and capitalises on individual strengths and abilities (intelligences).
It is interesting to note than an integrated approach is also consistent with Gardner’s view that intelligences work together in concert depending on the problem to be solved; some activities are postulated to require a higher progress of a single intelligence, whereas others the development of more than one intelligence. An integrated approach also means that the teacher needs to employ media and representations which are perhaps consistent with the intelligence-bias of the student. Multimedia learning facilities, such as CD-ROM based material, may be particularly useful to represent educational material through multiple perspectives, as well as mixed pictorial, textual and auditory modes (Veenema & Gardner , 1996). Likewise, in group work, a teacher could draw on and give attention to the experiences, knowledge and perspectives of individuals, so as to gain from the diverse-intelligence of the group.
The classroom implementation of the Multiple Intelligences theory has been described by several workers; e.g. (Campbell, 1989 & 1990) and (Campbell et al. (1999),(Weber, 1995). As mentioned above, these have been predominantly at the junior school level. Descriptions of the different implementation methods are given by Gardner (1999) and Thompson (1999). These include attempts to incorporate the attributes of all eight intelligences into a lesson, the concentration on two or three intelligences per lesson, and the set-up of different learning centres within the classroom to address the development of different intelligences. Campbell (1990) describes a learning centre approach in which a junior-school classroom is physically restructured into designated intelligence zones.
These are, of course, designed to relate to typical student interests, such that, for example, bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence is developed in the “building centre”, interpersonal intelligence in the “working together” centre, and linguistic intelligence in the “reading centre”; students devote a portion of each day working through the different centres. Campbell reports that classroom restructuring in this way had led to increased multi-modal skills, improved co-operative skills, and improved student attitudes and behaviour (particularly with children who had been previously identified as having behavioural problems). However, longitudinal studies, and critical comparisons to conventional teaching (control) programmes, have not been reported by the author. Furthermore, influences of the context of the teaching programme, i.e. the dependency of the particular contexts in which the student are learning, have not been considered; see the discussions by Gardner (1996) on the contextualisation and distribution of intelligence. Even so, some of the reported outcomes of this trial, and indeed similar trials under the Project Spectrum programme of Gardner and co-workers (Gardner (1999)), yield general implications to other Multiple Intelligences programmes:
• The provision of flexible learning will require a teacher commitment towards student-responsibility in learning. This, of course, may be beneficial in promoting intrinsic student motivation towards the learning task. Gardner himself states that the key imperative Multiple Intelligences is for individually configured education. • Students may exhibit competencies or leadership skills in certain intelligence areas, and thus an observable means for assessing student strengths and weaknesses. • The role of the teacher is likely to change to become more facilitative and less directive. However, the teacher will need to adopt a more creative teaching style so as to give consideration to the various student intelligences. • Students need to be assessed through their demonstrations of their spectra of intelligences in as natural fashion as possible, but care is needed to avoid labelling the student, which may otherwise act as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Recently, implementations of Gardner’s theory to secondary (high) school students have also been reported. Indeed, through the Project Zero scheme led by Gardner, information is being gathered on initiatives in schools at all levels, as well as homes, communities and adult training programmes. An issue of assessment becomes particularly pertinent at higher level schooling. Whilst junior school children may be resilient to societal demands on achievement, this is not likely to be so at later stages. Thus, students may enjoy learning kinaesthetically or musically, but may not perceive such learning as important or relevant through current essay and written test-based grading methods.
Thus, if Multiple Intelligences programmes are to be successful, particular efforts are needed in devising compatible assessment methods. This could involve, for example, the assessment of work portfolios containing mixed media material, and the use of different methods, instruments or procedures to assess student progress (Gardner and Thompson, 1999). Furthermore, it can be anticipated that the utilisation of multiple intelligences in every subject may be rather daunting, but as mentioned above, creative computer-based teaching methods may be appropriate, as well as the use of combined video, reading and physical models for learning.
Finally, for Multiple Intelligences based teaching approaches to be successful in schools, a fundamental change in the attitude of parents (or significant others) is also needed outside the school environment. This may be rather difficult for some parents who may, after all, have been products of a schooling system which had a distinct view of student success based on traditional intelligence theories. On the other hand, it is also impossible, as well as impractical, for a teacher to accommodate every lesson to all of the learning styles found within the classroom within a given time. In this respect, teacher can at least show students how to use their more developed intelligences to assist in the understanding of a subject which normally employs their weaker intelligences.

References Retrieved from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence on 2013, october 29.
Armstrong, T. (1993). 7 Kinds of Smart: Identifying and Developing Your Many Intelligence. New York: plume.
Armstrong, T. (1994). "Multiple Intelligences: Seven Ways to Approach Curriculum". Educational Leadership. New York: Plume.
Berman, M. (1998). A Multiple Intelligences Road to an ELT Classroom. Wales,UK: Crow House Publishing Limited.
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Campbell, L. C. (1999). Teaching and learning through multiple intelligences . New York: Allyn and Bacon .
Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books.
Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence reframed. New York: Basic Books.
Lawrence, D. (1996). Enhancing self-esteem in the classroom (2nd ed.). London: PCP Ltd .
Tanner, R. (2001). Teaching intelligently, English Teaching Professional (Vol. 20).
Thompson, H. (1999). Retrieved from http://www.arches.uga.edu/~hmt/webwrite/home.html
Veenema, S., & Gardner , H. (1996). Multimedia and multiple intelligences. The American Prospect, (Vol. 7 (29)). Retrieved from www.prospect.org/print/V7/29/veenema-s.html
Weber, E. (1995). Creative learning from inside. ., Vancouver, BC.: EduServ Inc.
Weber, E. (1995). Creative learning from inside. Vancouver, BC: EduServ Inc.

References: Armstrong, T. (1993). 7 Kinds of Smart: Identifying and Developing Your Many Intelligence. New York: plume. Armstrong, T. (1994). "Multiple Intelligences: Seven Ways to Approach Curriculum". Educational Leadership. New York: Plume. Berman, M. (1998). A Multiple Intelligences Road to an ELT Classroom. Wales,UK: Crow House Publishing Limited. Campbell, B. (1989). Multiplying intelligences in the classroom. . (Vol. IX). Campbell, B. (1990). The research results of a multiple intelligences classroom (Vol. XI). On the Beam. Campbell, L. C. (1999). Teaching and learning through multiple intelligences . New York: Allyn and Bacon . Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books. Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence reframed. New York: Basic Books. Lawrence, D. (1996). Enhancing self-esteem in the classroom (2nd ed.). London: PCP Ltd . Tanner, R. (2001). Teaching intelligently, English Teaching Professional (Vol. 20). Thompson, H. (1999). Retrieved from http://www.arches.uga.edu/~hmt/webwrite/home.html Veenema, S., & Gardner , H Weber, E. (1995). Creative learning from inside. ., Vancouver, BC.: EduServ Inc. Weber, E. (1995). Creative learning from inside. Vancouver, BC: EduServ Inc.