Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences - Howard Gardner
Every month an eLearning team member researches a learning theory to present to the rest of the team. This gives us valuable knowledge that can enhance your learning and teaching as well as can influence the way in which we support you with technology.
Howard Gardner is Professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Gardner’s cognitive theory works on the basis that individuals are capable of seven forms of intelligence as opposed to having a single ability. In short the theory holds that we learn and process information in different ways and one may demonstrate particularly strong intelligences in one area but also exhibit a range of other intelligences. The impetus is to use multiple intelligences as a framework. By having an awareness of differing learning approaches, teachers can adapt their learning design to accommodate the range of needs of the learners. Another perspective of this theory is that one who excels in musical activities can be just as intelligent as one who excels in logical mathematical areas. Each intelligence is independent and of equal importance.
The intelligences and their meanings are summarised below:
Intelligence
|
Meaning
|
Linguistic
|
Words and language
|
Logical-mathematical
|
Logic and numbers
|
Musical
|
Music, sound, rhythm
|
Spatial
|
Images and space
|
Body-kinesthetic
|
Body movement control
|
Intrapersonal (insight)
|
Self-awareness
|
Interpersonal (social skills)
|
Other people’s feelings
|
Fig 1. Table to explain the meaning behind the intelligences Source: Business Balls 2013
Gardner has continued to develop the multiple intelligences model and you will find more recent literature which refers to additional intelligences; naturalistic, spiritual, existential and moral.
Naturalistic
|
Natural environment
|
Spiritual/existential
|
Religion and ultimate issues
|
Moral
|
Ethics, humanity, value of life
|
Fig 2. Table to summarise the meaning behind current intelligences: Business Balls 2013
Gardner’s theory appears to recognise the existence of a combination of and concurrent intelligences rather than putting people into a one fit description. (Gardner 2006, p.22) states that “Inasmuch as nearly every cultural role requires several intelligences, it becomes important to consider individuals as a collection of aptitudes rather than as having a singular problem-solving faculty that can be measured directly through pencil-and-paper tests. “
Gardner’s statement infers that his theory goes beyond thinking of multiple intelligences as purely a learning styles framework but considers its relevance to assessment. This theory certainly raises interesting considerations for educators in relation to assessment.
As an extension to this brief summary and consideration of Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences theory it would be interesting to consider some critiques of this approach and how it works in a digital context. On a personal level I am open to Gardner’s theory although I can see that it could be construed as subjective and hard to measure.
Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences – a Digital Perspective
Fig 3. Mindmap Representation of Multiple Intelligences and learning technologies: EFL Classroom 2013
Further reading:
Gardner, H (2006) Multiple intelligences: New Horizons in theory & practice. [Online] Cambridge: Perseus Books. Available from: http://web.ebscohost.com[Accessed 28/02/2013].
Harvard Graduate School of Education. Project Zero. [Online] Available from: http://pzweb.harvard.edu/PIs/HG.htm[Accessed 04/01/2013].
Smith, Mark K. (2002, 2008) Howard Gardner and Multiple Intelligences', the encyclopedia of informal education. [Online] Available from: http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm[Accessed 04/01/2013].
Wikipedia. Theory of Multiple Intelligences. [Online] Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences. [Accessed 27/02/2013].
Weiss, R.P., 2000. Howard Gardner Talks about Technology. Business and Economics Management [e-journal] Vol 54, Issue 9, Available from: http://search.proquest.com/docview/227002689?accountid=11528[Accessed28/02/2013].
Businessballs.com.Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. [Online] Available from: http://www.businessballs.com/howardgardnermultipleintelligences.htm[Accessed 04/01/2013].
EFL Classroom. Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences and ICT Resources. [Online] http://community.eflclassroom.com/photo/howard-gardner-s-multiple-intelligences-and-ict-resources[Accessed 27/02/2013].
"On a personal level I am open to Gardner’s theory although I can see that it could be construed as subjective and hard to measure." This statement in the above text is the crux of what Art and Science deals with; the subjective and what cannot be measured, until it is measured. It is difficult to separate content from technique.
ReplyDeleteTechnique can be often measured. Often the best of classroom art is complete. We can dissect art with Gardiner and Bloom’s scalpels, but art may never be really ever finished. The challenge is to encourage students to explore new directions even though the responses to a challenge may be inadequate. The journey will come into a fork of the path and another decision must be made. There is a pregnant relationship between art and science. We are searching for a planet that humans can be moved to, when the planet becomes more inhospitable, as Hawkins has suggested. For me the product also represents the concept of time in physics and in many ways as described by T.S.Eliot in the Four Quartets. Time past, present and future are all simultaneous.
What a challenge, let’s make a photograph about a war scene in Afghanistan, in a studio. Especially since the artist was never been in Afghanistan and never been to war. In the artist’s studio it is quiet, nobody is dying, the odor of blood is absent, even the landscape is artificial. I am using an example is the work of Jeff Wall's Dead Troops Talk (A Vision After an Ambush of a Red Army Patrol near Moqor, Afghanistan, Winter 1986) (1992), which is splendidly exhibited at the new Broad Museum. We have just read a chapter of Susan Sontag's "On Photography," (1972) and it is updated regarding War Photography in Susan Sontag's "Regarding the Pain of Others."
Looking at Jeff Wall's photography sausage maker made in 1992. He took 19th century war photographers, the absurdity of war, Francisco Goya’s work, humor, a technical decision to make the image a Cibachrome transparency in a light box, 164 x 90 inches and tossed them into a his grinder and spiced it with Photoshop. A war photograph that moves many good humans yet there is an incredible number of decisions to be made. What about the viewer? The Sausage made, it was time for the viewer to digest it and make sense of it. The Gardner/Bloom sausage maker is again to create meaning. What about the little mouse that is being offered to a colleague?
Sontag writes about the piece "The antithesis of a document, the picture, a Cibachrome transparency seven and a half feet high and more than thirteen feet wide and mounted on a light box, shows figures posed in a landscape, a blasted hillside, that was constructed in the artist's studio. Wall, who is Canadian, was never in Afghanistan. The ambush is a made-up event in a savage war that had been much in the news. Wall set as his task the imagining of war's horror (he cites Goya as an inspiration), as in nineteenth-century history painting and other forms of history-as-spectacle that emerged in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—-just before the invention of the camera—such as tableaux viands, wax displays, dioramas, and panoramas, which made the past, especially the immediate past, seem astonishingly, disturbingly real."
Wall's conception, his mind, his experience his art was created in that sausage machine and the same sausage is reground in the Sontag Sausage Maker, Maybe the same meat, but the variety of herbs and ingredients are different and more meaning is created.
When I was first was exposed to Gardner so many years ago what impressed me about Gardner's multiple intelligences is that it's like that damned sausage machine, when you put all the ingredients, including Bloom's Taxonomy into the grinder a very tasty kielbasa can be created, but after it has been processed (cooked) than it takes a condiment like horseradish to fully bring out the complex tastes involved.
I’m sorry, I couldn’t get away from it and I am putting it to bed.
John