Howard Gardner : Theory Of Multiple Intelligences

In “A Rounded Version: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences”, Howard Gardner illustrates how there are a variety of intelligences. Gardner starts off with an example how IQ tests may predict achievement in school but may not predict achievement in life. After finding out certain parts of the brain are responsible for certain functions, such as “Broca’s Area” which is responsible for sentence production, Gardner proposes the existence of multiple intelligences. Multiple studies later led him to propose seven distinct intelligences; Musical, bodily-kinesthetic, logical-mathematical, linguistic, spatial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. Each intelligence has certain classifications. According to Gardner’s classifications, I realized my intelligences are bodily-kinesthetic, logical-mathematical, and intrapersonal.

You’re a genius! As this compliment rings in your head imagine that someone is referring to your ability to understand yourself, or even your ability to interact with other people. Under Gardner’s Theory of multiple intelligences each and every one of us have different intelligence strengths, our individual strengths are important in how we develop. Possibly making more unconventional geniuses. Knowing and acknowledging our strengths can help us to excel in life at different levels. Most of us are a combination of many different intelligences. Normally with one or two that are stronger than the others. Like many others you might be thinking intelligence only in reference to a high IQ, and knowledge these other so called “intelligences” are too broad, but I believe you couldn’t be more incorrect. These are possible new ideas for you but consider the fact that we all learn differently if we all had the same type of intelligence than we would all learn the exact same way. As we know this clearly not true. After deep reflection and some research I believe my strongest intelligence is Interpersonal intelligence. Strong interpersonal intelligence are people who are good at understanding and interacting with others nonverbally and verbally. Usually more talented in assessing the emotions and desires of those around them. My second strongest intelligence is intrapersonal intelligences describe as one’s ability to know and understand them self. It is believed that these

‘‘Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory can be used for curriculum development, planning instruction, selection of course activities, and related assessment strategies. Instruction which is designed to help students develop their strengths can also trigger their confidence to develop areas in which they are not as strong. Students’ multiple learning preferences can be addressed when instruction includes a range of meaningful and appropriate methods, activities, and assessments. Gardner’s early work in psychology and later in human cognition and human potential’ led to the development of the initial six intelligences. Today there are nine intelligences and the possibility of others may eventually expand the list. These intelligences (or competencies) relate to a person’s unique aptitude set of capabilities and ways they might prefer to demonstrate intellectual abilities’’ ( (Armstrong, T., 2010). Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences

Contact Information: David DiRamio, Ph.D. Associate Professor Administration of Higher Education 4096 Haley Center Auburn University, AL 36849 Office (334) 844-3065 E-mail: diramio@auburn.edu David Shannon, Ph.D. Professor Educational Psychology 4028 Haley Center Auburn University, AL 36849 Office (334) 844-3071 E-mail: shanndm@auburn.edu

Intelligence as defined by the Cambridge dictionary is the ability to learn, understand, and make judgments or have opinions that are based on reason.1 There is much debate and controversy on this subject and psychologists do not all agree upon a standard definition. Yet, one of the very first definitions of intelligence was developed by the psychologists responsible for the development of the first intelligence test, Binet and Simon (1905) who argued that the essence of intelligence is: ‘to judge well, to comprehend well, to reason well’.2 Another sample definition was provided later by Heim, in 1970, who argued that ‘intelligent activity consists in grasping the essentials in a situation and responding appropriately to them’.3 There are also arguments surrounding how many different types of intelligence there are, as well as the intelligence theories of psychology. However elusive, we can ascertain that all psychologists have universally agreed upon general intelligence (g), an expression devised by the English psychologist Charles Spearman and defined as ‘a mental attribute called on for virtually any task’.4 This essay will inform the reader of the different methods proposed and used by psychologists to assess ability and discuss their evaluations.

Howard Gardner introduced the theory Multiple Intelligence where he believes every person has the capacity to hold a unique set of “intelligences”. Growing up, I was taught that a person who was intelligent held a lot of knowledge. However, Gardner includes the importance of other capacities of intelligence. These intelligences include linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial-visual, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist talents. As teachers, it is crucial to let every child know they are special and hold a unique place in the world. Just because one student is not as good at solving mathematical problems than the other students, it does not mean he/she is less intelligent than the others. That

It is practically impossible for a nation’s intelligence community to detect and prevent every attack on its soil. However, the American failure to uncover the 9/11 plot should be considered a massive failure considering the scope of the attack which involved careful planning, training many perpetrators, and a high profile target with many victims. Furthermore it can be demonstrated that there were many signals and opportunities to discover the plot that the intelligence machinery missed. “Hindsight is 20/20” and there needs to be an understanding of how easy it is to look back at how the intelligence gathered before the attacks should have signaled a serious threat, and thus provoked the unraveling of the 9/11 plot had the intelligence community picked up on and discriminated the signals from the noise. . However, there is evidence that the US intelligence community’s failure to link the information they had differentiated from the “background noise” as representing a possible terrorist threat points to the entire failure of the intelligence system. Therefore, while a nation’s intelligence system and the communities supporting it cannot be expected to succeed 100% of the time, this incident pointed at a 100% failure of the American intelligence community. Although it is recognized that many factors contributed to this failure, there is evidence that the organizational structure and culture both within the individual intelligence agencies and amid the intelligence

applied in schools, the next three are applied in the arts and the last two are what Garder considers personality intelligence.

In conclusion with the multiple theories in the study the intelligence of an individual is linked to the way an individual’s brain metabolizes glucose and the neural efficiency with the

Howard Gardner and Edward Zigler are two influential psychologists who have altered the profession of psychology as well as provided new direction in such areas as early childhood development, education and even politics. Each, through their personal and professional paths, helped to establish a new foundation on which psychology stands today. Howard Gardner did not believe that psychology was going to be his profession. He considered becoming a lawyer, a doctor or a teacher (Gardner, 2003, p.79). His

Intelligence is referred to as an individual’s capacity for understanding, logic, learning, self-awareness, planning, emotional knowledge, problem solving and creativity. It can be generally described to be the ability of perceiving information, and retaining it as the applied knowledge towards some adaptive behaviors within a particular context or environment. Individuals do differ from each other in their understanding ability of complex ideas, to learn from their experiences, to adapt effectively to the environment, to overcome the obstacles through taking thought and to engage in the various reasoning forms. Though these individual differences can be found to be substantial, they are not always entirely consistent, for instance, the intellectual

Overall, Gardner came up with nine types of intelligences. However, this essay will only cover three of them: verbal/linguistic, body-kinesthetic, and logical/mathematical. This essay will also cover several examples of each type of intelligence. Gardner also had some critics criticizing his research which will also be included throughout the essay.

Santrok (2014) lists Gardner’s eight intelligences and states that children have all of the intelligences however they have their own strengths and weaknesses. Whereas Sobel & Li (2013) describe each of the eight intelligences in detail, and rather than asserting that the intelligences are used by every individual, Sobel and Li state that Gardner focuses on “unusual development or lack of unusual development of given abilities” (Sobel & Li, 2013, p.18).

The theory of multiple intelligences was developed by Dr. Howard Gardner in 1983. The Theory of Multiple Intelligences is a critique of the standard psychological view of intellect: there is a single intelligence, adequately measured by IQ or other short answer tests. Instead, on the basis of evidence from disparate sources, the theory claims that human beings have a number of relatively discrete intellectual capacities. IQ tests assess linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence, and sometimes spatial intelligence; they are a reasonably good predictor of who will do well in school. This is because humans have several other significant intellectual capacities (Harvard University).

The target audience for my presentation on multiple intelligences is elementary school teachers. If children’s individual capacity to learn is identified, harnessed and encouraged by teachers in grade school, learning will become more enjoyable for them and they will be set up for a positive attitude towards learning as they grow older. Of course an ideal situation would be for all school teachers to understand the concept of multiple intelligences, but starting at the grassroots level ensures an early adoption of a love of learning.