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by Thomas Armstrong
Table of Contents
Gardner's theory provides a much needed corrective to the shortcomings of traditional psychometric approaches. Instead of probing the bases of bubble-sheet results, Gardner sought to illuminate the mental abilities underlying the actual range of human accomplishment that are found across cultures.
—Mindy Kornhaber
Along with the expanding popularity of multiple intelligences, there has been a growing body of writing critical of the theory. In fact, one of the criticisms lodged against MI theory is that there has not been enough acknowledgment of the critical literature on the part of MI advocates. Willingham (2004), for example, observes: "Textbooks [on MI theory] for teachers in training generally offer extensive coverage of the theory, with little or no criticism" (p. 24). Traub (1998) writes: "Few of the teachers and administrators I talked to were familiar with the critiques of multiple intelligences theory; what they knew was that the theory worked for them. They talked about it almost euphorically" (p. 22). In this chapter, I'd like to review some of the major criticisms of MI and attempt to clear up what I believe are some key misconceptions about the theory.
Most of those making this complaint about MI theory come from the field of cognitive psychology (Waterhouse, 2006) or from the psychometric, or testing, community (Gottfredson, 2004). Waterhouse writes, "To date there have been no published studies that offer evidence of the validity of the MI." Similarly, Gottfredson argues that the literature on intelligence testing offers virtually no support for the idea of eight autonomous intelligences but overwhelming support for the concept of an overarching single intelligence, frequently attributed to Spearman (1927) and often referred to as "Spearman's g" or simply "the g factor" (see also Brody, 2006). Gottfredson (2004) writes:
The g factor was discovered by the first mental testers, who found that people who scored well on one type of mental test tended to score well on all of them. Regardless of their contents (words, numbers, pictures, shapes), how they are administered (individually or in groups; orally, in writing, or pantomimed), or what they're intended to measure (vocabulary, mathematical reasoning, spatial ability), all mental tests measure mostly the same thing. This common factor, g, can be distilled from scores on any broad set of cognitive tests, and it takes the same form among individuals of every age, race, sex, and nation yet studied. In other words, the g factor exists independently of schooling, paper-and-pencil tests, and culture. (p. 35)
Visser, Ashton, and Vernon (2006) put together a battery of 16 tests ostensibly covering the eight intelligences (two tests for each intelligence) and reported the presence of g running through most of the tests. These researchers argued that what Gardner calls intelligences are actually capacities that are secondary or even tertiary to the g factor. In other words, they exist but are subservient to g. J.B. Carroll (1993), who created his own hierarchy of human cognitive abilities with g at the top, compares Word Smart to "fluid intelligence" and Music Smart to "auditory perception" (a mistake on his part, because the multiple intelligences are not dependent upon the senses), while finding no place at all for Body Smart.
MI theory agrees that the g factor exists. What it disputes is that g is superior to other forms of human cognition. In MI theory, g has its place (primarily in Number/Logic Smart) as an equal alongside the other seven intelligences. It appears that the confusion is a matter of semantics. Most critics in the psychometric community agree that the intelligences in Gardner's model exist and are supported by testing. What they disagree about is whether or not they should be called "intelligences." They want to reserve the word intelligence for the g factor, while regarding the other seven intelligences as talents, abilities, capacities, or faculties. Gardner (2003) has written that he intended to be provocative in referring to multiple "intelligences" rather than multiple "talents." He wanted to challenge the sacrosanct nature of intelligence as a singular phenomenon and get people to think more deeply about what it means to be intelligent. The fact that he has stirred up so much controversy from the psychometric community suggests that he has at least partially accomplished his goal, even if he has not fully persuaded them to accept his theory.
The reality is that MI theory is supported empirically by a number of sources. In Frames of Mind (1993a), Gardner established eight criteria that needed to be met in order for an intelligence to appear in his theory (see Chapter 1 for a discussion of these). Each of the eight criteria provides a range of empirical data, from studies of brain-damaged individuals and "savant" populations, to evidence from prehistoric humanity and other species, to biographical studies of human development and research on human cultures. Davis, Christodoulou, Seider, and Gardner (2011) point out that many criticisms of MI theory pay scant attention to the criteria, which are supported by hundreds of empirical studies in several fields, including psychology, sociology, neurology, biology, anthropology, and the arts and humanities. Ironically, the fact that the psychometric community has stayed within the narrow confines of numbers and standardized testing actually limits its ability to give broad empirical support to the notion of a pure g-factor intelligence (Gottfredson's argument notwithstanding, g appears to measure "school-like" thinking; see Gardner, 2006b). On the other hand, MI's multiple sources of empirical data considerably expand its validity as a theoretical construct.
This criticism parallels the first one in suggesting that MI has no empirical support (or, to put it in a more contemporary context, is not research- or evidence-based). Here we are concerned, however, not with pure theory but, rather, with its practical applications in schools. For example, Collins (1998) writes that "evidence for the specifics of Gardner's theory is weak, and there is no firm research showing that its practical applications have been effective" (p. 95). Willingham (2004) writes:
[H]ard data are scarce. The most comprehensive study was a three-year examination of 41 schools that claim to use multiple intelligences. It was conducted by Mindy Kornhaber, a longtime Gardner collaborator. The results, unfortunately, are difficult to interpret. They reported that standardized test scores increased in 78 percent of the schools, but they failed to indicate whether the increase in each school was statistically significant. If not, then we would expect scores to increase in half the schools by chance. Moreover, there was no control group, and thus no basis for comparison with other schools in their districts. Furthermore, there is no way of knowing to what extent changes in the school are due to the implementation of ideas of multiple intelligences rather than, for example, the energizing thrill of adopting a new schoolwide program, new statewide standards, or some other unknown factor. (p. 24)
Perhaps the greatest problem with the argument that MI is not research- or evidence-based is that it is founded upon a very narrow conception of what constitutes authentic research. In the wake of the 2001 No Child Left Behind law, the idea of what constituted valid research began to be limited to highly controlled studies comparing experimental classrooms (implementing a specific educational intervention) to control classrooms, using standardized tests and quantitative tools based on correlation coefficients and levels of statistical significance. More recently, there's been an increased focus on effect size (a measure of the magnitude of the difference between an intervention group and a control group expressed in standard deviations) (Slavin, 2013). This has given rise to a list of specific classroom strategies or "influences" that result in positive educational outcomes (see, e.g., Hattie, 2008 for one guide).
There are many problems with using these ostensibly "rigorous" methodologies to validate the success of multiple intelligences in the classroom. First, multiple intelligences do not represent a specific educational intervention such as, for example, Direct Instruction (Marchand-Martella, Slocum, & Martella, 2003), which is implemented uniformly by all trained teachers and frequently receives high marks in rankings of evidence-based teaching methods (see, e.g., Education Consumers Foundation, 2011). MI theory represents a wide range of techniques, attitudes, tools, strategies, and methods, and each teacher is encouraged to develop his own unique approach to implementing them. It is impossible to conduct controlled studies of the kind Willingham demands because multiple intelligences in one classroom could be very different from multiple intelligences in another classroom and because even the control classroom would probably also be using multiple intelligences strategies to some extent. (In other words, how do you find a "pure" MI classroom and a control group that uses absolutely no MI to compare it with?)
Second, to demand a certain level of statistical significance or effect size from a study is to risk rejecting an educational intervention simply for "missing the cut" (e.g., does an effect size of .45 mean an intervention is not as effective as one with an effect size of .52?). While looking very objective, these figures often devolve into subjective impressions after all. Sullivan and Feinn (2012), for example, write: "Cohen classified effect sizes as small (d = 0.2), medium (d = 0.5), and large (d ≥ 0.8). According to Cohen, ‘a medium effect of .5 is visible to the naked eye of a careful observer. A small effect of .2 is noticeably smaller than medium but not so small as to be trivial.’" We might then dispense with the effect size and simply trust the effectiveness of a study to the "naked eye of a careful observer."
Third, to reduce the success or failure of a study to mere numbers is to reject other valid sources of a program's effectiveness, including individual case studies of children's learning improvement, parent reports of improved attitudes toward school, and documentation of learning progress through projects, problem solving, and portfolios (see Chapter 10 for a discussion of multiple intelligences and assessment methods).
The demand for quantitative precision in education is an unfortunate nod toward positivism—the idea that ultimate truth can be expressed only through numbers or similarly precise scientific formulations (see Comte, 1988). There are many other strands of thought in the Western intellectual tradition that argue for the validity of qualitative forms of research (see, e.g., Dilthey, 1989; Gadamer, 2005; and Polyani, 1974), and methodologies derived from these intellectual movements are especially appropriate to use in guiding educational research (see, e.g., Denzin & Lincoln, 2005).
The fact is that there are many examples of successful implementation of MI theory in educational programs around the world (see Chapter 16). In addition to the study mentioned by Willingham (Kornhaber, Fierros, & Veenema, 2003), which also noted increased levels of parent participation, decreased levels of discipline problems, and increased academic performance for students with learning difficulties, a number of research projects initiated by Harvard Project Zero have won accolades over the years, including Project Spectrum (Gardner, Feldman, & Krechevsky, 1998a, 1998b, 1998c), Practical Intelligences for School (Williams et al., 1996), and Arts Propel (Zessoules & Gardner, 1991), which was called by Newsweek magazine one of the two best educational programs in the United States (the other was the graduate school of the California Institute of Technology; Chideya, 1991). To celebrate the 20th anniversary of multiple intelligences theory in 2004, an entire issue of the prestigious Teachers College Record at Columbia University was dedicated to the work of multiple intelligences researchers and theoreticians (Shearer, 2004).
Shearer (2009) interviewed key education figures for the 25th anniversary of MI theory, including Noam Chomsky, Linda Darling-Hammond, and Deborah Meier, who viewed the theory of multiple intelligences as an important contribution to American education. In addition, the educational literature is replete with examples of individual schools and teachers who have shared their successes with implementing MI theory (see, e.g., Campbell & Campbell, 2000; Greenhawk, 1997; Hoerr, 2000; and Kunkel, 2007). Finally, many of the specific strategies that are used as part of the implementation of the theory of multiple intelligences are, in fact, evidence-based. Marzano's (2004) six steps to vocabulary development model, for example, which is viewed as being evidence-based, uses several multiple intelligences strategies. Step 3, for instance—"ask students to construct a picture, pictograph, or symbolic representation of the term"—is a Picture Smart strategy in MI theory. Many of the other strategies covered in this book have been similarly validated by quantitative research. But to expect to quantitatively validate an entire theory of learning consisting of thousands of potential instructional strategies would be a foolish notion, and yet educational researchers who should know better persist in their claim that "MI is not evidence-based."
Some critics have accused MI practitioners of using superficial applications of MI theory—strategies of which even Gardner himself would not approve. Willingham (2004), for example, has criticized previous editions of this very book for its "trivial ideas." He cites two spelling strategies—singing spelling words and spelling with leaves and twigs—as examples of trivial applications (note: spelling strategies have been omitted from this revised edition). Collins (1998) criticizes strategies from another multiple intelligences curriculum guide (not by this author) referring to a unit about the oceans in which students build boats and role-play at being sea creatures. He writes of a child using Body Smart to learn U.S. history: "How deeply can a student comprehend a given topic by relying on his strongest intelligence? Using his hands, Dave may be able to learn about the boats of the settlers, but can a kinesthetic approach help him understand central historical issues, like the reasons the Europeans came to America in the first place?" (p. 96). Similarly, critics have suggested that MI theory promulgates an artificial "feel good" attitude where every child is told that he is smart. Barnett, Ceci, and Williams (2006) write: "[M]ere relabeling may not have a permanent curative effect …. Focusing on the label rather than on meaningful performances that demonstrate skill may lead children to become further disillusioned once the first blush passes." They indicate that "the focus must be on displaying meaningful skills and competencies, not simply on feeling that one is smart" (p. 101).
During my 30 years of training teachers in MI, I have all too often seen teachers take the easy way out—believing, for instance, that "rapping math facts" meant they were "doing" multiple intelligences. But I have also seen many wonderfully original ideas related to MI theory created by experienced teachers over the years. Collins (1998) doubts that it is possible to use Body Smart to teach the historical factors that led Europeans to come to America. However, a well-designed role-play that imaginatively puts students at Plymouth Rock on November 11, 1620, and has them improvise reasons why they decided to leave England, gives the highly dramatic Body Smart learner an opportunity to think through the exercise in a more visceral way than can be accomplished by paper-and-pencil activities.
It is also true that it is not enough merely to tell students that they are smart in eight different ways and expect them to blossom. As noted earlier in this book in a discussion of Dweck's (2007) growth mindset, such assurances need to be followed up with solid academic effort leading to tangible improvements in knowledge of history, math, science, reading, and other basic subjects. The argument of MI theory is that textbooks, lectures, and standardized tests are not sufficient to produce this type of understanding, but that something more is required. Students need to investigate ideas in world history, chemistry, ecology, literature, economics, algebra, and other domains by involving their total selves (and whole brains), and this includes using their bodies, imagination, social sensibilities, emotions, and naturalistic inclinations, as well as their verbal and reasoning skills to master new material.
It is interesting to note that most of the criticisms of MI theory have come from academics and journalists—people who are usually far removed from the classroom. Few criticisms actually come from those who have applied the theory in their classrooms and seen the difference it makes in students' lives. This suggests a profound split between those academicians who build their reputations on finding logical holes in accepted ideas (or journalists who can build their journals' circulation) and practitioners who are too busy looking for ways to motivate children and methods to turn their lives around to worry about abstract logical inconsistencies or insufficiencies.
It also bears noting that MI theory was not originally designed by Howard Gardner as an educational model to be applied in the classroom. He initially wanted to convince academic psychologists that there was another, broader way of conceiving of intelligence. Despite arousing controversy, he seems to have failed in this effort among psychometricians. And yet, unexpectedly, he found teachers responding enthusiastically to his model because it filled a need that had not been previously met by educational approaches concerned with standardized testing and lockstep textbook approaches to learning. MI theory succeeded by revealing the positive qualities of all children and providing practical ways for them to experience success in the classroom rather than treating them as colorless denizens of a statistical bell curve. Thus, the most authentic refutation of the critics of MI can be found in the children themselves. Whenever a light goes on in a child's mind in a well-designed MI classroom, the argument supporting MI theory becomes that much stronger and clearer.
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