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The Brock International Prize in Education, which Howard Gardner was awarded in 2015, has created a short video summary of the theory of multiple intelligences.
In the engaging and quick feature, which incorporates illustrations and diagrams, the components and implications of MI theory are explained in simple terms.
Check out the 2-minute video below!
In 2013, Howard Gardner was interviewed by the Spanish website, tiching.com.
Recently, this blog appeared in the Spanish education book, "Hablamos de Educación", or "Let's Talk About Education". Pages from the book featuring the interview can be found below, along with an English translation.
All around the world, the MI Theory continues to have an impact on education.
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2013 Interview with Tiching.com, English translation. This interview appeared in Spanish in its entirety in 2013 on blog.tiching.com.
Tiching: Your Multiple Intelligences Theory is known around the world, but how can you define the term “intelligence”?
Howard Gardner: An intelligence is the biological and psychological potential to analyze information in specific ways, in order to solve problems or to create products that are valued in a culture.
T: Your Theory explains that exist eight different intelligences. Do we have all the intelligences in various grades or each person has only one type of intelligence?
HG: As implied by the definition, I reject the notion that human beings have a single intelligence, which can be drawn on for the full range of problem solving. What is usually called ‘intelligence’ refers to the linguistic and logical capacities that are valued in certain kinds of school and for certain school-like tasks. It leaves little if any room for spatial intelligence, personal intelligences, musical intelligence etc.
All human beings have all of the intelligences. But we differ, for both genetic and experiential reasons, in our profile of intelligences at any moment. We can enhance our intelligences, but I am never going to become Yo-Yo Ma, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, or Pele, the soccer player.
T: We attended your Conference in Montserrat College and you talked about two new intelligences that you want to introduce (pedagogical and spiritual). How has this issue advanced?
HG: In order for me to ‘endorse’ an intelligence, I need to carry out lots of research. I have had not had the time to research ‘teaching intelligence’ and that the survey I conducted years ago of ‘existential intelligence’ left me uncertain about whether it is a full-blown intelligence. Yet I use these terms informally and anyone else is welcome to do so as well.
T: Which criteria do you use in order to include a new type of intelligence in your theory?
HG: My eight criteria for an intelligence are laid out in chapter 4 of my 1983 book FRAMES OF MIND. These criteria are drawn from several disciplines and several kinds of populations. There is not a single foolproof equation for determining whether a candidate intelligence does or does not qualify. I weigh the various considerations and make the best judgment I can. My guess is that ‘teaching intelligence’ and ‘existential intelligence’ would do pretty well on the 8 criteria: but as I’ve said, I have not been able to do the required research to be confident about my conclusion.
T: Do you think you will include more types of intelligence in the future?
HG: Only in a speculative manner. My colleague Antonio Battro has written about a ‘digital intelligence’ and that is certainly worth thinking about. However, at present, what he calls ‘digital intelligence’ seems adequately accounted for by logical-mathematical and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence—the skills of coding and of manipulating a mouse and/or a cursor.
T: You are working on Oasis Project, what are its objectives?
HG: This is a website, which will be launched in the summer of 2013 multipleintelligencesoasis.org It represents my effort to describe MI theory, to highlight powerful applications, and to point out problematic assertions—hence the image of an oasis (water in the middle of a parched desert). At first it will only be an English but I’d be delighted if we could find a way to produce a high quality version in Spanish.
T: Most of the members of our community are teachers, how can they identify the intelligence of their pupils?
HG: When speaking to parents, I encourage them to take their child(ren) to a children’s museum and watch carefully what the child does, how she/she does it, what he/she returns to, where there is definite growth. Teachers could do the same or could set up ‘play areas’ which provide ‘nutrition’ for different intelligences… and watch carefully what happens and what does not happen with each child.
When a child is thriving, there is no reason to spend time assessing intelligences. But when a child is NOT thriving—in school or at home—that is the time to apply the lens of multiple intelligences and see whether one can find ways to help the child thrive in different environments.
T: Once intelligences are identified, how can they be enhanced? Are empowerment mechanisms different for each type of intelligence?
HG: Intelligences are enhanced when a person engaged in activities that involve the exercise of that intelligence. It helps to have good teachers, ample resources, and personal motivation. Anyone can improve any intelligence; but it is easier to improve the intelligence if those factors are available and if you have high potential in that intelligence.
T: Should school curriculums be rethinked in order to enhance all the intelligences? If yes, what should be transformed?
HG: I don’t think that it is necessary to rethink curricular goals. But it is certainly worth thinking about whether these goals can be reached in multiple ways. I think that any important educational goal can be realized via several routes. In Chapter 7-9 of my 1999 book THE DISCIPLINED MIND, I show how to teach important lessons in science, history, and music, through alternative intelligences routes.
T: Which is the importance of new technologies, such as Tiching, in the learning process of each pupil?
HG: Any good teacher should become acquainted with relevant technologies. But the technologies should not dictate an education goal. Rather, the teacher (or parent or student or policy maker) should ask: can technology help to achieve this goal, and which technologies are most likely to be helpful?
T: Which is the intelligence that you have more developed?
HG: I think that I am strongest in linguistic and musical intelligence, and I continue to work on my interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence.
T: In which project/s are you working on now?
HG: For the last twenty years, I have been engaged in the GoodWork Project, a study of how professions survive in a time when markets are very powerful. The GWP now has many offshoots- which you can read about at thegoodproject.org. With Richard Light, a close colleague, I am starting a study of Liberal arts and sciences in the 21st century. We want to understand how best to create and preserve a form of higher education that we value but that is in jeopardy for many reasons.
Notes by Howard Gardner
When the theory of multiple intelligences was proposed thirty five years ago, I drew on evidence from a number of different disciplines and fields. By far the most dramatic source of evidence emanated from studies of brain functioning. I had worked for years in a neurological clinic. In that setting, I had the opportunity both to observe individuals who had an ability destroyed, or spared, in isolation; and through the instrumentation of CT scans, to determine which areas of the brain had been destroyed or spared in cases of specific deficits or preserved strengths. If anything set apart my theory from that of other theories of intelligence, it was the culling of information about the brain basis and loci of specific intellectual capacities.
In the intervening years, far more sophisticated measures of brain activity are available, several ‘in vivo’. Through PET scans, MRI, and other measures, we have far more detailed and specific information about brain involvement in various cognitive activities.
Taking advantage of these new measures, Branton Shearer and Jessica Karnian have carried out a very intriguing study. They have examined the cognitive neuroscience literature to find references to activities associated with each of the several intelligences; and then they have gathered the information in a paper "The Neuroscience of Intelligences: Empirical Support for the Theory of Multiple Intelligences”. The paper was presented recently at the annual meeting of the International Mind Brain and Education Society in Toronto.
As the authors interpret the data, the large body of literature provides support for the validity of MI theory. Obviously this conclusion pleases me. But more important than a confirmation of specific claims is the re-opening of the question of neural bases for different cognitive activities, and how that evidence relates to claims about “general” intelligence. All scientists understand that their particular claims are likely to be modified; we hope to have contributed a significant element to our emerging understandings. Below, please find a set of slides describing their study. Click on the images to enlarge them.
Multiple Intelligences: Understanding Your "Superpowers"
Amy Mintz
In today’s educational landscape, it is common for many students to experience anxiety. Young people today are busy, with many competing demands and expectations. Yet a large part of the pressure they feel comes from a source that is supposed to reward them for content mastery: standardized testing. Measures like the SAT and state-mandated assessments have resulted in increasingly high levels of stress as young people await numeric scores deemed to be reflections of their aptitude, even though these types of tests are very limited measures of overall intelligence.
How can re-calibrating the conversation empower students to have better self-esteem and an enhanced understanding of their abilities and those of others?
As a nonprofit founder and an educator, I have worked to help students reconsider the narrow meaning of intelligence we see espoused in many schools, and I have used the theory of multiple intelligences to do so. The mission of my 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, Student Body of America Association, is to support young people through education, and in doing so, our programs have implemented the theory of multiple intelligences in workshops, educational materials, curricula, and more. The impact it has had on our students has been striking.
As shared by one of our young program participants, “Learning about multiple intelligences has taught me there are many layers to everyone. I was able to learn more about the different qualities that make me who I am. I feel much more confident and sure of myself knowing my strengths.”
Our research further shows that youth participants who attended a two-day workshop to learn about multiple intelligences, and then completed a survey provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, showed an average 10 percent improvement in their self-esteem. The most significant gains were evident when youth were asked if they "take a positive attitude towards [themselves]." Survey data showed a 20 percent increase.
Based on these results, I recognized the power that MI had to transform young people’s perceptions. As a result, Dr. Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences provides the framework for the MI9 Team, a book I wrote to empower youth to recognize their unique skills and special talents and to apply their strengths to reach their full potential.
This book is about a group of nine fictional superheroes, each of whom is an expert in a particular intelligence. For example, Hoku, the superhero who symbolizes bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, is a superb athlete and highly trained in martial arts. And while Hoku’s expertise came quite naturally, some of the other heroes had to work hard at the intelligence they now represent. Yin, once socially isolated and lonely, worked very hard to overcome her inhibiting shyness and now represents interpersonal intelligence.
While the MI9 Team members have superpowers, as all superheroes do, what is most significant is the fact that these characters possess qualities that each and every one of us can exhibit as well. In addition to a particular component of MI theory (e.g. musical intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, naturalist intelligence), the MI9 Team superheroes each embody two other unique qualities—a specific positive character trait (such as leadership, tenacity, determination, etc.) and a social cause they are passionate about. For instance, Sphinx, the leader of the team, fittingly epitomizes leadership. Her social cause is gender equality, and she opened a school for girls in Concordia, the impoverished land where she grew up and where gender discrimination prevents most girls from getting an education. In contrast, her fellow superhero Pierre grew up surrounded by prosperity and high expectations, but he had an apathetic family who turned a blind eye to his struggles with depression. After running away and a bout of homelessness, he ultimately comes into his own as a member of the MI9 Team and champions empathy, which he lacked as a youth. His social issue, also influenced by his personal experiences, is mental disorders.
I have shared the MI9 team with many of the young people with whom I work. When asked about whether they connect to anyone in the story, students typically identify the superheroes who represent the intelligences they feel are their strongest. These young people also express their aspirations to be more like a superhero who is skilled in an intelligence that they want to improve. One girl, who wants to be an engineer but has a hard time at school with math and science, finds that her favorite character is Athena, who represents logical-mathematical intelligence. This student has recently joined the STEM club at her school in hopes of improving her skills. With the MI9 superheroes as strong role models, we can help students remember that they each possess unique talents and that they should always do the right thing.
As young people enter adolescence, they look increasingly beyond their parents, at their peers and the media, for role models who may influence their choices, goals and behavior. In helping youth to avoid negative role models, Common Sense Media suggests helping young people “choose positive role models who embody the values you want to pass down.” The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry agrees that youth should choose positive role models by identifying qualities they admire; and the MI9 Team provides an array of qualities so there’s something that everyone can relate to, whether by intelligence, character trait, or social cause.
In summary, I have found that the multiple intelligences are a tool useful to improving youth self-esteem, whether taught academically or in the context of a fantasy world. MI is a framework with wide applicability; not only does it help young people understand themselves better, but it can also be instrumental in considering potential college majors, career paths, or volunteer opportunities. MI ultimately inspires mutual respect as students learn to appreciate the diverse abilities that they and their peers possess.
Amy Mintz is President of Student Body of America Association, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization she founded in 2011 to support the youth and education. She began working on the MI9 Team series in 2013, inspired by her experiences growing up in different countries around the world and years of experience educating the youth. The MI9 Team projects include a series of books, graphic novels, and animated film.
Notes by Howard Gardner
Standard tests of scholarship (including IQ tests) typically tap linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences. In fact, students who are strong in these intelligences are likely to do well on tests, and in school. As long as they stay in school, they will think they are smart!
We now know that at the extremes of abilities, linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence are quite distinct.
In other words, having high linguistic intelligence does not predict high logical mathematical intelligence or vice versa.
As this article points out, it is very important not to confound these two forms of intelligence. Accordingly, tests of mathematical intelligence are not reliable if they require linguistic sophistication.
If we feel the need to test for individual intelligences, we should make sure that we do so in as ‘pure’ a form as possible.
