Educating From Multiple Intelligences
For a few years we have been experiencing a revolution in education. New technologies and new teaching methods are changing the traditional ways of teaching and learning in schools. Now Multiple Intelligences are beginning to gain ground in formal education.
You begin to think that you can teach and learn in a different way than the traditional one based on memorization, tests and homework. This new method consists of educating students from multiple intelligences.
This original method considers that it can be taught in many different ways, being able to achieve a deeper and more permanent knowledge. We can also try to ensure that education reaches all the students we have in the classroom without excluding any of them.
Howard Gardner and Multiple Intelligences
In 1983 Howard Gardner, an American researcher, psychologist and professor, surprised the educational world with his theory that intelligence is defined as the ability to solve different difficult situations, seeking the right solutions and being able to create and invent new things. He transformed what were hitherto called talents or abilities and defined them as Intelligences.
Howard Gardner defined eight types of Intelligences that we all possess to a greater or lesser extent and which would be the following:
- Linguistic-Verbal, which would be the ability to use oral and written language to inform, communicate, persuade, entertain and acquire new knowledge.
- Logical-Mathematical that would be the ability to construct solutions and solve problems, as well as structure elements to make deductions.
- Intrapersonal that includes our thoughts and feelings.
- Interpersonal, which would be the ability to form and maintain relationships and assume various roles within the group.
- Visual-Spatial which consists of the ability to think and form a mental model of the world in three dimensions. It usually develops thanks to drawing and painting.
- Musical that would be the ability to understand or communicate emotions and ideas through music. It refers to both the ability to compose and to interpret.
- Kinesthetic, which is the ability to use one’s own body to carry out activities and solve situations.
- Naturalist who concentrates all those skills of observation, planning and hypothesis testing that lead people to understand the natural world.
Introduce Multiple Intelligences in current education
Among these eight intelligences, schools have traditionally given priority to Linguistic-Verbal and Logical-Mathematical Intelligence. The consequence is that this priority for the students who had high marks in these subjects , has separated from education other students who did not have a great development of these two intelligences.
However, if we educate these students from the Multiple Intelligences they can have great potential in some of the other six intelligences. According to this theory, if a subject is approached in class taking into account Multiple Intelligences, we can guarantee a deeper and permanent knowledge on the part of the student.
This is so since a topic will be treated from different perspectives. In addition, with this method we will be able to reach all students according to their predominant intelligence and not separate any of them. All students will be included in the teaching-learning method respecting their own idiosyncrasies.
The teacher will have to identify the strengths of the children in the first weeks of class instead of their shortcomings, which was how education was approached in traditional teaching. You will have to discover that all of your students are different, with unique and singular brains.
Educate from Multiple Intelligences
Teaching from Multiple Intelligences will lead teachers to design classes in a transversal and multidisciplinary way. An attempt will be made to work through different projects within the same center that promote these multiple intelligences in all the classrooms of the school.
Implementing teaching from Multiple Intelligences requires will and imagination on the part of all the teachers at the center. Teachers will have to carry out a continuous process of observation that allows them to collect useful information by gathering reports that show the abilities of the students.
They will also be able to discover the abilities of their students by talking to parents or other teachers, asking the students themselves or also organizing special activities to get to know them.
If students are educated from Multiple Intelligences, in the future it will be possible to individualize and personalize education as required. Education will be adapted to the needs of today’s world and an attempt will be made to reduce school failure. Educating from Multiple Intelligences means teaching and learning in a different way than the traditional one.
