Chapter 3
MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES THEORY
“It is of the utmost importance that we recognize and nurture
all of combinations of the varied human intelligences, and
all of the intelligences.”(Howard Gardner, 1987:5)
In an ideal, utopian world, every student would learn the same content in exactly the same way. Teachers could teach a lesson once and all students would understand and learn the concept before moving on to the next topic of the day. Nevertheless, as we all know very well, students are not like this; on the contrary, each student has their own favourite way of learning and teachers are faced with the challenge of teaching students with a wide range of abilities. As Van Sciver (2005:534) remarked, “Teachers are now dealing with a level of academic diversity in their classrooms unheard of just a decade ago”. Thus, in a single classroom, students’ learning abilities may range from above grade level to below grade level. For example, in a high school class made up of thirty students, one will definitely notice a variation of students’ range of abilities. In terms of speaking abilities for instance, one student may communicate at a beginner or an elementary level, while another communicates far beyond his/her grade level (at an upper-intermediate, advanced or even proficiency scale). Furthermore, students tend to have different personalities, backgrounds and learning styles that have to be taken into consideration and carefully catered for by their educators. This is why, any educator should be a proficient connoisseur of the existing learning styles, learning theories and teaching strategies that would lead to a clever selection of the suitable teaching approach. Moreover, it is imperative for every teacher to permanently keep in touch with the latest discoveries in fields of Psychology and Methodology and project their future activity so as to maximize the learners’ potential.
It is common knowledge that every learning theory has had (and continues to have) a profound effect upon the practice of language teaching and even if a new theory has emerged as a reaction to perceived inadequacies or impracticalities of the previous ones, each of them played a significant role, introducing innovations at a given moment and serving as a basis for new discoveries. In other words, we cannot compare learning theories and teaching techniques and we should value the positive aspects in all of them.
Nevertheless, the following lines of this chapter will be dedicated to a revolutionary theory that triggered off radical changes into the perception of intelligence and language teaching, namely the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, proposed in 1983 by the American psychologist, Howard Gardner. In my opinion, this is the very theory that caters for the unique personality each student possesses and that has answered almost all my questions regarding my students’ behaviour in class. (Why do some students really enjoy and perform better working in groups whilst others are much more productive when working alone? Why do some learners draw pictures in their notebooks while others appear to simply need to hear a word or a grammatical structure and they are instantly capable of using it by their own? Why was I successful with an activity applied on some students while performing the same activity with another group of students I was not?)
3.1. The Concept of Intelligence
Intelligence is a complex issue that has always led to a wide range of contradictory statements and long-running and fierce debates. There are as many as 150 definitions of intelligence in the field of Psychology with supporters maintaining its traditional meaning and potency and opponents challenging the standard connotations and embracing some more comprehensive, more complex, broader and even more pragmatic perspectives.
The first indirect records of the term “intelligence” were registered during the Antiquity, when the concept of intelligence was rather perceived and referred to as an ideal; thus, the ancient Greeks valued “physical ability, rational judgment and virtuous behaviour” (Gardner, 1999:1), while the Romans tended to rank ‘courage’ as the supreme ideal. By way of contrast, the Chinese treasured different ideals such as skills in music, drawing and archery.
It is generally known that the adjective “intelligent” has always had a strong impact on people over the centuries, and those who are referred to as “intelligent”, are expected to be able to succeed not only in academic life but also in tasks and situations they confront with throughout their existence. Therefore, along the centuries, many psychologists have attempted to define, measure and express human intellectual capabilities. Generally speaking, intelligence is defined as “the general mental ability involved in calculating, reasoning, perceiving relationships and analogies, learning quickly, storing and retrieving information, using language fluently, classifying, generalizing, and adjusting to new situations.” (Columbia Encyclopaedia, sixth edition, 2006). More specifically, two major approaches to perceiving intelligence can be traced: the traditional theories based on the IQ perspective and the theories based on Multiple perspectives.
Intelligence theories based on the IQ perspective used to define the term as a “static, single construct” (Snider 2001:5), that is a unitary and constant attribute measuring language and logic through the well known IQ (Intelligence Quotient) test, developed by the famous French psychologist Alfred Binet in 1906. The IQ test was later modified (1920-1930) so as to suit the American society, being further referred to as the Standford-Binet Intelligence Scale (Gardner, 1999:12). Furthermore, other tests such as SAT (Scholastic Aptitude/Assessment Tests) were developed but they were based on the same singularity perspective that accepted intelligence as a sole capacity which was measured by the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests. Even though all these tests only assessed a narrow range of logical and linguistic capacities, they soon became the standard intelligence instruments of evaluation used not only in the U.S.A., but all over the world; what is more, the general public seems to have embraced this limited view according to which intelligence is what the intelligence tests mentioned above used to measure. (Kail and Pellegrina, 1985: 158). A good example to illustrate the above mentioned statement would be that of Marilyn Vos Savant, the individual holding the world’s highest recorded score on the IQ test (as registered by the Guinness Book of World Records). Famous columnist, author, lecturer and playwright, Marilyn Vos Savant is often portrayed as the most intelligent person in the world and since 1986 she has been writing a weekly syndicated column entitled “Ask Marilyn” for many newspapers and magazines in the United States in which she solves puzzles and answers questions from readers on a variety of subjects. (Vos Savant 1998). Many people read her column and worship the logical and exact answers she offers to tricky questions. Whatever intelligence might mean, Vos Savant was considered to have plenty of it. Nonetheless, in 1990, after concluding that IQ tests are not reliable enough to designate a single world record holder, the Guinness retired the category “Highest IQ”.
Despite the fact that enormous changes in the conceptualization of intellect had occurred in recent years in the fields of Physics, Biology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, the perception of intelligence had remained slightly unchanged for the last 100 years (Gardner, 2004) .