Gardner's Multiple intelligences
During EDGCT5007 we looked at learning styles and it was then that I found reference to Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. It seemed that the Solitary Intrapersonal intelligence was my dominant learning style.
So how do these intelligences relate to students in the classroom, in particular in a practical based delivery with a high level of self-directed theory. How do I know I have been able to ensure all students learned all parts of the content, seeing that it will play an important role in their future job. Also the fact that I have two children who both learn in "opposite" ways and a desire to know how best I can assist them with their learning in our current (inflexible) educational system has stimulated me to choose Gardner's Multiple Inteligences as a module for EDGCT5008. Reference for picture: http://amfreund.info/2012/02/08/infographic-multiple-intelligences-2/ |
What is Gardner's MI?
# Howard Gardner conlcuded that students learn, perform, understand, remember in their own unique ways and has described eight distinct intelligences. The diagram above only shows seven as the 'nature' intelligence was added at a later time.
# The strength of those intelligences and the ways in which such intelligences are called upon and combined to carry out different tasks, solve problems or progress in various domains creates the difference between students
# As such, delivering and assessing content in a variety of ways would assist many a student as well as keep thngs fair and equal for all students involved.
# Howard Gardner conlcuded that students learn, perform, understand, remember in their own unique ways and has described eight distinct intelligences. The diagram above only shows seven as the 'nature' intelligence was added at a later time.
# The strength of those intelligences and the ways in which such intelligences are called upon and combined to carry out different tasks, solve problems or progress in various domains creates the difference between students
# As such, delivering and assessing content in a variety of ways would assist many a student as well as keep thngs fair and equal for all students involved.
MI Self-Assessment Test
Doing the MI Self-Assessment test was a good opportunity to reflect and assess if we really know our own learning preferences. Having finished the test I thought the outcomes reflected my order of intelligences according to the questions that were asked, but I felt the order did not reflect how I perceived myself. Having said that, no matter what test you do it is often easy to identify the intelligences associated with the questions which could sometimes lead to a bit of bias as you feel your answer to the question should be positive or negative.
Whilst waiting for the result I was adamant that the intrapersonal/self intelligence would come out “on top”, closely followed by either the math/logic or visual/spatial intelligences. Growing up as an only child I learned very early on to appreciate the company of me, myself and I, to be independent and get on with things. The motto in our household was “if you want to get something done, don’t wait for someone else to do it but do it yourself”. Reading the explanation of this intelligence you could have easily placed a photo of me beside it. So why did it come second? And what happened to my perceived notion of being a visual person who is logical minded? |
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Setting out to prove that this test was not completely accurate or at least prove myself right (was I after a self-fulfilling prophecy?), I did the Birmingham Grid of Learning test. 60 Questions which were slightly differently formulated when compared to those provided by Literacynet.com. In regards to the math/logic intelligence the Birmingham focus was more on logic then on “seeing mathematical ratios in the world around me”; I have a hard time visualising mathematical ratios but can certainly see the logic in things.
According to the BGoL I did indeed know about myself and my strengths and weaknesses with the intrapersonal or “Myself Smart” intelligence being most dominant, closely followed by intelligences described as number smart (logic/math) and picture smart (visual/spatial), with word smart (linguistic) being number four.
However, back to the test as requested in task 2. As stated before, Body/Kinestetic was the preferred intelligence (4.57) which was also Justine’s preferred intelligence . I was somewhat surprised by this as I thought my intrapersonal intelligence would “rule” above all, and although I like to move, walk and participate in sport, I do not feel it is my dominant intelligence when it comes to learning. As a student, having the body/kinestetic intelligence as our preferred intelligence, we probably get the most out of a session where theory is intermingled with hands-on activities. Keeping that in mind for our students, we both agreed that it is not that difficult to ensure that content is delivered keeping multiple intelligences in mind, but that it is often harder to ensure assessment tasks have the same multi intelligence aspects. Often assessment guidelines are provided in a training package which does not leave much room for flexibility. So, how can we ensure there are assessment options for students so they can utilise their intelligence and at the same time ensure all assessment tasks are fair and equal? And is always working within your own intelligence appropriate? According to Brookfield (1995) “letting people stick with what comes easily to them is a form of cognitive impairment” and as such for a student’s learning style to be challenged with an assessment task which is outside their preferred intelligences is actually a good thing.
Having said this, the musical explanation of the Gardner’s MI Theory in one of the YouTube videos was a hard pill to swallow. Having music as our least dominant intelligences we both did not enjoy the song or the YouTube video and will probably never look at it again.
Seeing linguistic as my third preferred intelligence, after intrapersonal/self, came as no real surprise. Although not the best with words verbally, sentences don’t always flow smoothly, I do pride myself on good spelling. As English is my second language, the thesaurus is my “bible” on every application on my computer and when spellcheck advises me a word is not spelled correctly I manually change it to ensure I know the correct spelling for next time. For Justine having nature as her third intelligence came as some surprise to her; although she enjoys pets and being outsides in the garden or going for walks, she does not see herself as a nature “specialist” who knows names of animals and plants or stays home to watch nature documentaries.
So how does all this translate as a teacher to the classroom? Just as it may be difficult for a student to do an assessment task which lies outside their preferred intelligences, it is just as hard for a teacher to find the time to come up with ingenious ways of teaching content in non-preferred ways. For example, I don’t think I will ever use music in my classroom, except for allowing students to listen to their iPods whilst doing self-directed activities in class. We must not forget that most teachers at a TAFE are industry specialised and not a teacher per se. Teaching skill and experience is build up over the years, which will lead to changes in their delivery and assessment. However, when these industry specialists first start out as teachers, they tend to teach in ways they know best and experienced when they were a student. If I compare my assessment tasks for for example Anatomy & Physiology between now and six years ago when I first started, they are completely different. Memorising of facts, diseases and body systems has been replaced by scenarios and research.
Being unable to repeat what we memorised 20-25 years ago when we studied, we both agreed with Howard Gardner that for a student to be actively
involved in learning is one of the main aspects of good content delivery. Being an active learner, learning through trial and error or doing things hands-on,
will not only assist in getting content to stick in a student’s memory but often will allow a teacher to remember a student.
References:
Big Thinkers. Howard Gardner on Multiple Intelligences (YouTube file). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2QtSbP4FRg
Brookfield, S.D. (1995), Becoming a critically Reflective Teacher (p.18). San Francisco, USA: Jossey-Bass
Kagan, Dr.S. & Kagan, M. (1998), Multiple Intelligences – The Complete MI Book. San Clemente, CA: Kagan Cooperative Learning
According to the BGoL I did indeed know about myself and my strengths and weaknesses with the intrapersonal or “Myself Smart” intelligence being most dominant, closely followed by intelligences described as number smart (logic/math) and picture smart (visual/spatial), with word smart (linguistic) being number four.
However, back to the test as requested in task 2. As stated before, Body/Kinestetic was the preferred intelligence (4.57) which was also Justine’s preferred intelligence . I was somewhat surprised by this as I thought my intrapersonal intelligence would “rule” above all, and although I like to move, walk and participate in sport, I do not feel it is my dominant intelligence when it comes to learning. As a student, having the body/kinestetic intelligence as our preferred intelligence, we probably get the most out of a session where theory is intermingled with hands-on activities. Keeping that in mind for our students, we both agreed that it is not that difficult to ensure that content is delivered keeping multiple intelligences in mind, but that it is often harder to ensure assessment tasks have the same multi intelligence aspects. Often assessment guidelines are provided in a training package which does not leave much room for flexibility. So, how can we ensure there are assessment options for students so they can utilise their intelligence and at the same time ensure all assessment tasks are fair and equal? And is always working within your own intelligence appropriate? According to Brookfield (1995) “letting people stick with what comes easily to them is a form of cognitive impairment” and as such for a student’s learning style to be challenged with an assessment task which is outside their preferred intelligences is actually a good thing.
Having said this, the musical explanation of the Gardner’s MI Theory in one of the YouTube videos was a hard pill to swallow. Having music as our least dominant intelligences we both did not enjoy the song or the YouTube video and will probably never look at it again.
Seeing linguistic as my third preferred intelligence, after intrapersonal/self, came as no real surprise. Although not the best with words verbally, sentences don’t always flow smoothly, I do pride myself on good spelling. As English is my second language, the thesaurus is my “bible” on every application on my computer and when spellcheck advises me a word is not spelled correctly I manually change it to ensure I know the correct spelling for next time. For Justine having nature as her third intelligence came as some surprise to her; although she enjoys pets and being outsides in the garden or going for walks, she does not see herself as a nature “specialist” who knows names of animals and plants or stays home to watch nature documentaries.
So how does all this translate as a teacher to the classroom? Just as it may be difficult for a student to do an assessment task which lies outside their preferred intelligences, it is just as hard for a teacher to find the time to come up with ingenious ways of teaching content in non-preferred ways. For example, I don’t think I will ever use music in my classroom, except for allowing students to listen to their iPods whilst doing self-directed activities in class. We must not forget that most teachers at a TAFE are industry specialised and not a teacher per se. Teaching skill and experience is build up over the years, which will lead to changes in their delivery and assessment. However, when these industry specialists first start out as teachers, they tend to teach in ways they know best and experienced when they were a student. If I compare my assessment tasks for for example Anatomy & Physiology between now and six years ago when I first started, they are completely different. Memorising of facts, diseases and body systems has been replaced by scenarios and research.
Being unable to repeat what we memorised 20-25 years ago when we studied, we both agreed with Howard Gardner that for a student to be actively
involved in learning is one of the main aspects of good content delivery. Being an active learner, learning through trial and error or doing things hands-on,
will not only assist in getting content to stick in a student’s memory but often will allow a teacher to remember a student.
References:
Big Thinkers. Howard Gardner on Multiple Intelligences (YouTube file). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2QtSbP4FRg
Brookfield, S.D. (1995), Becoming a critically Reflective Teacher (p.18). San Francisco, USA: Jossey-Bass
Kagan, Dr.S. & Kagan, M. (1998), Multiple Intelligences – The Complete MI Book. San Clemente, CA: Kagan Cooperative Learning
TASK 5 Learners, the MI assessment and reflection
Teaching patients new things, from sgtrengthening exercises, good posture or any type of Daily Activity, requires that you understand your patient's preferred learning style. As such, the AHA needs to have a good understanding of what learning styles actually are and how multiple intelligences play a role. One way to do this is by doing a self-test. The buttons below represent the following documents:
1. (button on the left) - Reflection on the self-test and subsequent class discussion
2. (middle button) - The Multiple Intelligence self-test I have used. This test came from Businessballs.com
3. (button on the right) - The explanation in regards to multiple intelligences provided by Businessballs.com and handed out to the students
Teaching patients new things, from sgtrengthening exercises, good posture or any type of Daily Activity, requires that you understand your patient's preferred learning style. As such, the AHA needs to have a good understanding of what learning styles actually are and how multiple intelligences play a role. One way to do this is by doing a self-test. The buttons below represent the following documents:
1. (button on the left) - Reflection on the self-test and subsequent class discussion
2. (middle button) - The Multiple Intelligence self-test I have used. This test came from Businessballs.com
3. (button on the right) - The explanation in regards to multiple intelligences provided by Businessballs.com and handed out to the students