Module Response
Multiple Intelligences
At a recent conference, Howard Gardner indicated that his theory of multiple intelligences cannot be accomplished in the face of No Child Left Behind and standards-based education. In some of his writing he has also said, “to the surprise of many, including me, the theory of multiple intelligences has become influential in educational circles. It is often assimilated, inappropriately, in my view, into work on cognitive or learning styles. Educators have sought to determine the intellectual strengths (the intelligence profiles) of their students through a variety of informal, jerry-built methods. They have also drawn a multitude of often inconsistent inferences about practice from the theory. These range from teaching seven or eight different subjects, each centering on a particular intelligence; to organizing groups of students based on their favored intelligences; to building curricula that focus on specific intelligences; to teaching subjects in seven or eight different ways.”
Briefly discuss your reactions to each of these two statements.
The NCLB policy focuses on tests and assessments that measure only the linguistic and mathematical intelligences. Teachers are forced to teach to the tests, which limits the creative assessments that can be measured through the Multiple Intelligences. Therefore the children who excel in a more creative way will not get recognized by the government and their opportunities to expand their talents will be limited. I agree with
Gardner that in the face of NCLB, his Multiple Intelligence theory cannot be accomplished. I would love to see a true Multiple Intelligence environment and I plan to try to implement it in my classroom but overall I don't see how it can be implemented in the face of NCLB.
I agree with Gardner that a teacher shouldn’t teach seven or eight different subjects, each centering on a particular intelligence. That would appear to design each subject for only the learners who would learn well using that intelligence. I agree with Gardner “that teachers should approach a concept, subject matter, or a discipline in a variety of ways.” (Woolfolk, 2005) This should help motivate different learners to learn the same concepts. I would imagine that some teachers have used Gardner’s theory incorrectly but I haven’t seen it firsthand.
I also agree with Gardner that teachers should not organize groups of students based on their favored intelligences. I believe that grouping students with different intelligences could help students to appreciate concepts through a different perspective. In creating webquests, I learned that by grouping multiple levels of students, or different types of learners, in one group they could help each other to learn concepts from different angles. If students were grouped according to their favored intelligences it would leave that group struggling when it came to a subject that didn’t apply well to their intelligent.
I believe as educators that we can use Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences to understand our student’s learning styles. With this information, we can create lessons that offer a variety of ways to learn new concepts or subject matter using these learning styles. I believe that using a variety of styles that are appropriate can give the students the motivation to learn. It will be something that they can relate to, something in their schema. I believe that Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences can be used by teachers to give our students richer and wider ways to learn.