Multiple Intelligences: Widely Used Yet Misunderstood

This week’s article summary is Multiple Intelligences: Widely Used Yet Misunderstood.

Howard Gardner’s work on multiple intelligences has significantly influenced education for the past 35 years.

As the article explains, Gardner’s basic premise is that intelligence encompasses more than what schools have traditionally measured, namely strong verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematical abilities.

Gardner widened the definition of intelligence to include musical-rhythmic/harmonic, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, interpersonal, naturalistic.

This makes sense: while I don’t know how mathematically and verbally inclined they were, clearly Van Gogh, Chopin, and Jesse Owens were respective geniuses in art, music, and athletics.

Because of Gardner, I modified how I taught so my humanities classes, assignments, and assessments weren’t only for those who were strong verbally and analytically.

The problem for Gardner and his theory of multiple perspectives, as the article explains, is that they were erroneously linked with learning styles.

Last year one of my article summaries was The Myth of Teaching to Learning Styles, which explained that regardless of how one likes to receive information—visual, auditory, kinesthetic—there are specific effective methods we all need to use to actually learn that information. i.e., store it in our long-term memory.

Gardner believes that there are many types of intelligences and that awareness of learning styles is important, yet he doesn’t want his ideas conflated with learning styles.

At the end of the article he poses some basic do’s and don’ts to use in the classroom.

Joe

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When Howard Gardner introduced his multiple intelligences theory 35 years ago, it was a revolutionary idea that challenged long-cherished beliefs.

At the time, psychologists were interested in general intelligence—a person’s ability to solve problems and apply logical reasoning across a wide range of disciplines. Popularized in part by the IQ test, which was originally developed in the early 1900s to assess a child’s ability to understand, reason, and make judgments, the idea of general intelligence helped explain why some students seemed to excel at many subjects. Gardner found the concept too limiting.

“Most writings about intelligence focus on a combination of linguistic and logical intelligences. The particular intellectual strengths, I often maintain, of a law professor,” Gardner explains. Having grown up playing piano, Gardner wondered why the arts weren’t included in discussions about intelligence. As a graduate student studying psychology in the 1960s, he felt “struck by the virtual absence of any mention of the arts in the key textbooks.”

That doubt planted the seed that grew into Gardner’s big insight: The prevailing idea of a single, monolithic intelligence didn’t match the world he observed. Surely Mozart’s genius was partially, but not fully, explained by an extraordinary musical intelligence. And wasn’t it the case that all people demonstrated a wide range of intellectual capabilities—from linguistic to social to logical—that were often mutually reinforcing, and that ebbed and flowed over time based on a person’s changing interests and efforts?

But if Gardner’s objective was to broaden and democratize our conception of intelligence—an idea that resonates deeply with teachers—the pull of the old model has been hard to shake. Today, the idea of multiple intelligences is as popular as ever, but it’s starting to look suspiciously like the theory Gardner sought to displace.

“It’s true that I write a lot and also that I am misunderstood a lot,” says Gardner who originally proposed seven distinct intelligences, adding an eighth a decade later. The big mistake: In popular culture, and in our educational system, the theory of multiple intelligences has too often been conflated with learning styles, reducing Gardner’s premise of a multifaceted system back to a single “preferred intelligence”: Students are visual or auditory learners, for example, but never both. We’ve stumbled into the same old trap—we’ve simply traded one intelligence for another.

It’s clear that children learn differently—teachers in Edutopia’s audience are adamant on that score—but research shows that when students process and retain information, there is no dominant biological style, and that when teachers try to match instruction to a perceived learning style, the benefits are nonexistent.

Still, the idea endures.

Over 90 percent of teachers believe that students learn better when they receive information tailored to their preferred learning styles, but that’s a myth, explains Paul Howard-Jones, professor of neuroscience and education at the University of Bristol. “The brain’s interconnectivity makes such an assumption unsound, and reviews of educational literature and controlled laboratory studies fail to support this approach to teaching.”

Students are also swayed by the idea. A recent study found that many students still hold to the conventional wisdom that learning styles are legitimate, and often adapt their study strategies to match these learning styles. But after analyzing the test scores of these students, researchers found no improvement. Instead, they found that tried-and-true strategies—such as viewing microscope slides online—worked equally well for all students, whether they considered themselves linguistic or visual learners.

The study highlights the value of learning through multiple modalities, which is an effective way to boost memory and understanding. A 2015 study found that students have a deeper conceptual understanding of a lesson when teachers pair lectures with diagrams. Students retain more information when textbooks contain illustrations because the images complement the text. When students use more than one medium to process a lesson, learning is more deeply encoded—and being overly reliant on a perceived dominant learning style is a recipe for learning less effectively.

So what should teachers do? Gardner recommends that “multiple intelligences should not, in and of itself, be an educational goal.” Instead, here are a few evidence-based dos and don’ts for applying multiple intelligences theory in your classroom.

Do:

·         Give students multiple ways to access information: Not only will your lessons be more engaging, but students will be more likely to remember information that’s presented in different ways.

·         Individualize your lessons: It still makes sense to differentiate your instruction, even if students don’t have a single dominant learning style. Avoid a one-size-fits-all method of teaching, and think about students’ needs and interests.

·         Incorporate the arts into your lessons: Schools often focus on the linguistic and logical intelligences, but we can nurture student growth by letting them express themselves in different ways. As Gardner explains, “My theory of multiple intelligences provides a basis for education in the arts. According to this theory, all of us as human beings possess a number of intellectual potentials.”

Don’t:

·         Label students with a particular type of intelligence: By pigeonholing students, we deny them opportunities to learn at a deeper, richer level. Labels—such as “book smart” or “visual learner”—can be harmful when they discourage students from exploring other ways of thinking and learning, or from developing their weaker skills.

·         Confuse multiple intelligences with learning styles: A popular misconception is that learning styles is a useful classroom application of multiple intelligences theory. “This notion is incoherent,” argues Gardner. We read and process spatial information with our eyes, but reading and processing require different types of intelligence. It doesn’t matter what sense we use to pick up information—what matters is how our brain processes that information. “Drop the term styles. It will confuse others, and it won't help either you or your students.”

·         Try to match a lesson to a student’s perceived learning style: Although students may have a preference for how material is presented, there’s little evidence that matching materials to a preference will enhance learning. In matching, an assumption is made that there’s a single best way to learn, which may ultimately prevent students and teachers from using strategies that work. “When one has a thorough understanding of a topic, one can typically think of it in several ways.”

Is Student Voice and Choice a Good Idea?

This week’s article summary is Raising Student Voice and Choice is the Mantra But is It a Good Idea.

I found the article interesting because it hits on the either/or extreme of education: should kids be given more voice in what they study, how they study, and how they demonstrate their learning and understanding (a more progressive pedagogy) or should standard content knowledge be the principal goal of education and the common foundation upon which subsequent learning and application is possible (a more traditional pedagogy).

As you’ll see in the article, the reason student choice is being questioned in many schools is because it doesn’t directly lead to higher student achievement on state tests.

Trinity is fortunate in that our success as a school is not based on standardized tests results. (Our students perform well on standardized tests yet this is really a byproduct of our program.) Our Program Pillars are replete with phases about fostering student engagement in and excitement for school and learning:

• “Cultivate voice, choice, and self-reflection”
• “Exhibit continued curiosity, creativity, and confidence
• “Imagine, discover, and experiment independently and collaboratively”

Certainly content knowledge is important and teachers need to be experienced guides to help students make informed choices about their learning, yet to me building upon a child’s innate curiosity should be a paramount goal of any school.

Here’s an additional article that provides some examples of student choice in the classroom: What Giving Students Choice Looks Like in the Classroom.

Joe

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Giving students more choice over what they learn and how they demonstrate mastery is a tricky task for educators. Take the case of  one 10th grader. He had to pick from three options to report on his summer reading project, and opted to create a mock Instagram post because he thought it would be fun.

But was the "fun" option the best educational one? How much of a role should the teacher have played in helping the teenager choose from the options? And will giving students greater choice in what they learn and how they learn it lead to higher student achievement?

Educators are wrestling with those kinds of questions as more and more schools embrace personalized learning and its accompanying mantra to give students more individualized control over their academic experiences.

Proponents of this belief argue that it fuels student motivation—which, in turn, improves achievement.

But critics see it very differently.

"We're exacerbating an existing problem" by letting kids, instead of teachers, guide learning, said Benjamin Riley, the executive director of Deans for Impact, a coalition of education school directors working to improve teacher preparation and student achievement. "Whether a student is smiling, happy, and jumping around doesn't tell you whether they've learned anything."

The worry is that too much student choice could turn into a free-for-all that could hurt graduation rates, lead to poor performance on state tests, and weaken academic skills.

Still, educators across the country involved in personalized learning initiatives are embracing greater student choice. They cite higher student engagement, lower absentee rates, and even improvements in test scores.

But leaving more learning decisions up to students—especially those who are struggling academically—may leave a lot to chance.

"If you have kids working far-below grade level, how do you reconcile those things?" asked Laura Hamilton, a senior behavioral scientist at the Rand Corporation who has researched personalized learning.

At Myrtle Beach Middle School in the 42,000-student Horry County, S.C., district, personalized learning has taken some interesting twists and turns. When it began in the middle school five years ago, the model was heavy on the use of digital curricula and was highly prescriptive in terms of pacing and what teachers were expected to cover.

Five years later, teachers and students have more control over the resources they use and the lessons they progress through. Students can make choices about their path and focus through digital content. Teachers frequently meet with students and help them set their own goals for achievement.

Myrtle Beach Middle School teacher Rebecca Myers said her students often work on very different projects or assignments in the same class. Some might be collaborating on a project, others working in small groups to build academic skills, and others meeting with her one-on-one. Sometimes, these might be self-selected tasks, while on other occasions they might be driven by the teacher's decision. Students also have choices about how to demonstrate their understanding of a reading passage, picking from an essay or a Google slide presentation, she said.

Myers insists it's not a free-for-all. What students learn is tied tightly to state standards. Teachers frequently meet with students to guide them in setting their own goals, and data play a critical role.

But the student is a key player in this process, examining data and setting expectations for where he or she should be in the learning process.

"When all the adults share a vision for student achievement, the piece that often goes missing is when children are left out of the loop," Christy said. "We are really focused on making sure we bring the kids into the conversation."

Though the results don't conclusively demonstrate the impact of that approach, the school has seen jumps in achievement on state tests in reading and math in 7th and 8th grade. For example, from 2015 to 2018, 8th grade reading proficiency jumped from 59 percent to 65 percent. Seventh grade math proficiency jumped by 10 percentage points in the same period.

Empowering students to make choices can build important skills, said Betheny Gross, a senior analyst and research director for the Center on Reinventing Public Education.

"We want kids to grow up and be confident and capable and charting their own course," Gross said. "We know from brain science that developing the capacity to enlist your executive function and meta-cognitive skills takes training, and school is a good place to do that."

The downside is it's tricky to do that well.

Gross said researchers working on the report did see instances of students taking positive control of their own learning and developing that agency and capacity. But they also saw drawbacks.

Often, she said, teachers don't have a clear theory of action about how to provide "voice and choice" for student learning. When students are picking among options without a rationale behind what matters, "students are just picking," she said.

In fact, when they have choices, students often go for the option that will be the easiest, not the one that will help them improve their skills the most, Gross said. "The kids suffer the consequences of making bad choices—always picking the collage, never developing the writing skills," she said.

And that reality, many educators say, can affect students who struggle in class—or even typical students—significantly more than high-achieving students.

Riley of Deans for Impact said educators often point to student engagement as a way to measure whether giving students greater choice over learning is beneficial. But he said there's little evidence that engagement leads to better learning outcomes: "Engagement is a poor proxy for learning."

Similarly, some researchers say allowing students to go at their own pace through materials presents complications. Researchers at RAND who are studying personalized learning found that when given flexible deadlines, some students wait until the last minute to do their work, the research group's Hamilton said. "You can create some inequities if you allow pace to vary for different students," she said.

Plus, she said, "there's an inherent conflict between wanting students to have developed those skills required and giving students choices about what and how they learn. We heard from a lot of folks that there is this tension between state standards and grade-level testing and letting kids go at their own pace."

In teacher Sarah Martindale's Advanced Placement biology and chemistry classes students get plenty of options to demonstrate learning, using a tic-tac-toe board with choices in every square. As assignments progress, students must use at least three of the options to demonstrate mastery.

The student who chose the "fun" option for his summer reading project, is in Martindale's class. He concedes that he does sometimes choose the fastest option. "You always think: What's going to take the most and least time? But I only think about what will be fastest if my schedule is packed. Otherwise, it's more about what I want to learn."

Martindale is particularly proud of the fact that all of her students passed the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, biology tests—a record in her 18-year teaching career. She attributes it, in part, to students having those choices and taking ownership of their own educational success. "If they're more excited about the work, they'll remember it," she said.

Martindale frequently does "check-ins" with students to make sure they're progressing and sets deadlines. During those meetings, she pushes them to take learning further. "Even the procrastinators, when they know you're not going to leave them alone, they get it," she said.

Another 10th grader in Martindale's class said she appreciates the value of allowing students to have greater control over their education. "Not every student gets it when the teacher lectures and they take notes. Some students need to go home and watch videos," she said. "I want to be able to choose the way I learn."