September 1997 | Volume 55 | Number 1

Teaching for Multiple Intelligences

Martian Chronicles

Marge Scherer

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The First Seven. . . and the Eighth: A Conversation with Howard Gardner

Kathy Checkley

Human intelligence continues to intrigue psychologists, neurologists, and educators. According to Howard Gardner, humans have at least eight intelligences. From his research at Project Zero at Harvard University, Gardner described seven intelligences in 1985: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. To those he has recently added the naturalist intelligence—the ability to "discriminate between living things and other features of the natural world—an ability that was clearly of value in our evolutionary past." Gardner advises teachers to observe their own and their students' strengths and to plan lessons and other learning activities in ways that encourage children to use their strengths and improve on their weaknesses.

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Variations on a Theme—How Teachers Interpret MI Theory

Linda Campbell

Campbell discovered scores of approaches to multiple intelligences while researching Teaching and Learning Through Multiple Intelligences (1996). In this article, she describes five multiple intelligences formats, with examples and suggestions from schools around the country:

Lesson design: Begin by reflecting on a concept that you want to teach and identify the intelligences that seem most appropriate for communicating it.

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Multiple Intelligences as a Partner in School Improvement

Howard Gardner

More than a decade after introducing his theory of "multiple intelligences," Howard Gardner discusses the promise—and the challenges—of using his ideas in the classroom. Multiple Intelligences (MI) "is not an end in itself," Gardner writes. Those interested in MI must first state their educational goals and values, he asserts. Only when educators clearly state and agree upon these larger goals—to teach for understanding, prepare individuals for the world beyond school, to develop each person's potential fully, or to make sure that students master core knowledge—does it make sense to ask: "Can MI be useful in pursuit of this goal? If so, how?" MI can be an extremely useful tool—or better, partner—in the process of creating excellent schools, Gardner writes.

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Integrating Learning Styles and Multiple Intelligences

Harvey Silver, Richard Strong and Matthew Perini

Both the theory of multiple intelligences, primarily deriving from cognitive science, and learning style theory, primarily deriving from the psychoanalytic work of Carl Jung, have many classroom applications, particularly if we integrate these theories into a useful model. Learning styles emphasize the different ways people think and feel as they solve problems, create products, and interact. The theory of multiple intelligence seeks to understand how cultures and disciplines shape human potential. Learning styles are concerned with differences in the process of learning, whereas multiple intelligences center on the content and products of learning. The authors have developed a model that shows how each of Howard Gardner's seven intelligences is expressed in four learning styles: mastery, understanding, interpersonal, and self-expressive, as well as assessment products that teachers might encourage students to build a strength or shore up a competence. For example, someone with great strength in kinesthetic intelligence and who leans toward a self-expressive style might choose to create a diorama or display, represent ideas in dance or drama, or develop a plan for directing a scene.

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Where Do the Learning Theories Overlap?

Pat Burke Guild

Multiple intelligences, learning styles, and brain-based education are distinct fields of study, but in the practical environment of the school classroom, the outcomes look strikingly similar. In the article, we visit three schools with common features. In each school, we find students actively involved in their learning, teachers talking with learners and with one another to make decisions and solve problems, students learning in a variety of ways, multiple resources available, curriculum related to interests of students, and more. The article explores six particular areas of overlap and discusses the common cautions that educators must consider in the applications of the theories.

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The GREENing of Learning: Using the Eighth Multiple Intelligence

Maggie Meyer

At Lakes Elementary School in Lacey, Washington, one hundred 6th graders are involved in an integrated curriculum on watersheds. The curriculum focuses on both the state's essential learning requirements and the application of Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, with a particular emphasis on the eighth intelligence—the naturalist. Teachers guide 6th graders through the imagery of the riparian zone—the forested area adjacent to most rivers (a visual-spatial activity). Students take samples of aquatic organisms on the Deschutes River (bodily-kinesthetic); reflect on the chemical monitoring tests they perform (intrapersonal); and work in pairs or groups to present information to community forums (interpersonal), among dozens of other activities. Meyer observes, in fact, that some students seem particularly in tune with nature; they see things and make connections that others overlook. In other words, they exhibit naturalist intelligence—the intelligence needed to solve ecological problems.

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A Think Tank Cultivates Kids

Jean Sausele Knodt

The Think Tank is a combination discovery room and lab at the Kent Gardens Elementary School in McLean, Virginia. In this well-lit, comfortable room, K–6 students might be doing any number of things—constructing a geodesic dome from straws, working at one of the round tables in the invention center, searching for objects to view under a microscope, or making architectural drawings, for example. All 620 children are scheduled to come to this room for an hour every other week, but many come more often. The spirit an tempo vary from loud and active to pensive and quiet, but all the students seem to be having fun while working hard. The Think Tank synthesizes many ideas and theories, but above all, it is based on Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. The author designs projects to use students' strengths, to get them to explore areas where they are weaker and may feel less comfortable, and to help them develop skills in areas to which they may not otherwise be exposed. Every activity is fully integrated with all other course work.

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The Summer Stars Program

Mary Lou Cantrell, Susan Austin Ebdon, Russell Firlik, Diane Johnson and Dianne Rearick

Space, futurism, exploration, and stardom are some of the themes at a one-week summer camp in New Canaan, Connecticut. Designing projects around Howard Gardner's eight multiple intelligences, three teachers and a public school math coordinator with the support of a school principal have created the camp where children ages 7-12 tap into their talent areas. Now in its third year, projects in the Summer Stars Program include: writing musical compositions, constructing launchable rockets, building block structures from students' blueprints, and writing and illustrating a camp newsletter. Students also choose a field trip to either the Bridgeport Discovery Museum, the Norwalk Maritime Center, or Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation. The article also explores issues, such as increasing the male/female ratio and developing a research study for parents and campers that led to a reevaluation of the program and changes in the second and third year.

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Frog Ballets and Musical Fractions

Thomas R. Hoerr

Educators at New City School in St. Louis, Missouri, have implemented a schoolwide multiple intelligences approach for the past 10 years. According to the author, "Our work with multiple intelligences has affected how we design our curriculum, how we assess student progress, how we communicate with parents, and how we work together." Teachers create new lessons that incorporate musical intelligence into mathematics, spatial intelligence into classroom management, and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence into social studies. Assessments allow students to use multiple intelligences as they make videotapes for their portfolios and perform in "living museums" in the school lobby. Standardized tests show that students perform far above average, and teachers have developed a collegial school environment that supports continuous learning among both staff and students.

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A Multiple Intelligences Inventory

Veronica Borruso Emig

Emig offers examples of how she has enlisted multiple intelligences in her sophomore World Cultures class at a New Hope, Pennsylvania, high school. One example is a lesson in which students examined the differences between inventions, innovations, and diffusions (the latter being combinations of existing inventions to meet new needs or situations). Students first defined the terms (linguistic) and related them to everyday artifacts or situations (logical). Next, they used pennies, cards, tape, paper clips, and colored markers to construct an object (bodily kinesthetic). They then had to determine whether they had been inventing, innovating, or diffusing. Finally, they wrote opinions about which of the three processes takes the most intelligence (logical). Emig found these opinions infinitely wiser than those written before she introduced multiple intelligences approaches. To plot the status of her assignments and determine if she had neglected an intelligence, Emig developed a Multiple Intelligences Inventory. The statistical and anecdotal information have helped her evaluate an entire unit and see where she has made teaching inroads and what needs improving. She has developed a similar checklist to assess each student.

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From Crockett to Tubman: Investigating Historical Perspectives

Wendy Ecklund Lambert

A high school American History teacher shows that teachers can play a significant role in empowering young people to effectively use their intelligences. Through project-based units, in which students have many choices of projects and formats that complement their intelligence strengths and help overcome their weaknesses, students learn about historical eras and develop self-confidence. In addition, they develop metacognitive skills as they learn how to apply their creativity in a formalized process. Students completed projects on the "Expansion Era" of American history, showing how the Erie Canal worked, what abolition may have meant to those in slavery, and what historical personages might have written in their journals. Through such real-life projects, students learned how to be successful in the real world.

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Three Billy Goats and Gardner

Gayle Emery Merrefield

Merrefield relates her success using multiple intelligences at First Foot Forward, a preschool special education program where she worked as a speech-language pathologist. She focuses on a class of 5-year-olds, whose disabilities ranged from speech and language disorders and cognitive and fine motor development deficits, short attention spans, and impulse control problems. For this class, she and the classroom teacher devised a "Three Billy Goats Gruff" unit, writing their own lyrics for a song based on the venerable fairy tale. They de-emphasized language—their students' weakness—and taught to their more evident intelligences while indirectly addressing language skills. To teach the concepts of small, medium, and large, for example, Merrefield recited the story (linguistic) and had the children role-play the characters (linguistic) while crawling across a balance-beam bridge (spatial, bodily-kinesthetic). The children also worked in groups (interpersonal), and they solved various assembly problems (spatial, logical-mathematical). The 5-year-old children made great strides in language, as well as in their attention spans, group interaction, and self-esteem.

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Multiple Intelligences Meet Standards

Jan Greenhawk

Teachers at White Marsh Elementary School in Trappe, Maryland, introduced multiple intelligence five years ago, in response to the rigorous performance standards of the new Maryland School Performance Assessment, which required students to apply skills to real-life problems. Gardner's theory helped the children understand that they could use their strong intelligences to improve weak ones. Teachers also consulted art, drama, and music specialists to advise them on how to set rigorous evaluation standards and help children make gains in all subjects. As the students have understood that more is expected of them, their overall achievement and confidence have risen substantially, far exceeding original expectations.

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Multiple Intelligences in Multiple Settings

Wilma Vialle

Multiple intelligences theory has transformed teaching in Australia, especially among preschool, primary school, and special educators, according to Vialle. To find out how Australian teachers are implementing the theory, she observed classrooms in 30 schools and interviewed 150 teachers. She noted two basic approaches: teaching to and teach through multiple intelligences (the best teachers used both). When teaching to the intelligence, teachers develop each child's skills in each intelligence. At Cook Primary School, for example, students in every grade have a weekly Japanese lesson and spend regular time periods studying music and dance. Teachers also develop thematic units in which they give each intelligence equal time. In the second approach, teachers develop students' skills in particular disciplines by providing learning activities through a number of intelligences. For example, to reinforce the mathematical concepts of ascending and descending, one teacher asked students to perform the Mexican waves, as fans do at sporting events. Vialle found that the most common way teachers incorporate multiple intelligences is through integrated units.

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The Brain-Flex Project

Christopher Bounds and Lyn Harrison

At St. Patrick's Marist College—a Catholic secondary school in Dundas, New South Wales, Australia—students have been pursuing independent projects in a program called Brain-Flex. Based on Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences theory, the program grew out of the principal's concern that first-year (generally 14-year-old) students were losing their motivation to learn. Brain-Flex is based on the principles that students learn best when the subject really interests them, when they are allowed to learn in different ways, and when they are responsible for their own learning. Under the guidance of teacher-tutors and other adult mentors, each student completes two or three projects during the school year. (These have ranged from learning the skills of horse dressage to cooking family recipes.) Students begin by negotiating a learning contract with their tutor, in which they explain in writing why they have chosen their topic and what they hope to learn. They conclude the project with a presentation to their peers.

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Using Multiple Intelligence Theory to Identify Gifted Children

Carol Reid and Brenda Romanoff

In North Carolina's Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district, some 13,000 students are involved in the Program for the Gifted—about 10 percent of the 2nd-12th graders. A few years ago, the district transformed the gifted program for grades 2-5 when it began basing curriculum, teaching, and assessment on Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. As a result, the district avoids socioeconomic bias in identifying gifted students; 26 percent of the 2nd graders placed this year are from low-income families. In the classrooms for the gifted, the children must use their creative, practical, and analytical thinking skills more often to solve actual or simulated real-world problems. They do this through activities such as problem solving with a map, math story puzzlers, and open-ended problems where they use any combination of intelligences and any strategies they choose. Teaches assess children in the gifted program by observing them as they engage in hands-on problem solving and by reviewing their reflective journals and portfolio collections.

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Strategies for Success: A Conversation with Ron Brandt

Carolyn R. Pool

Ron Brandt, Executive Editor of Educational Leadership for 17 years, provides his reflections on important educational themes featured in the journal, as well as influential educators who contributed articles and ideas to ASCD publishing and program development. Brandt also discusses his own educational path, including his elementary years in a one-room schoolhouse and his years at a teacher training school in Nigeria, West Africa. Throughout, he traces his development as a progressive educator, with an abiding interest in the intellectual but a desire to provide experience-based learning activities for students—and to find writers for the journal who could write from their own experience.

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An American in Kazakstan: Life in a Fish Bowl

Shanta Swezy

Through spending a few years as English teachers in Kazakstan, Peace Corps volunteers learn about diverse customs, how others view their culture, and how to live with daily shortages. In return, teachers and students from this developing country understand Americans a little better. The article focuses on school life in this former Soviet Republic from the perspective of an American teacher—from the outdated textbooks to students' cultural habits to the economic burdens affecting teachers' lives. One lasting message: Despite daily hardships and frustrations, friendships and strong favorable impressions prevail even after the volunteer has left.

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Letters

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Quantifying MI's Gains

Andrew S. Latham

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Web Wonders

Carolyn R. Pool

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Reviews

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Resources

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ASCD in Action

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Copyright © 2004 by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development