MI Theory Featured in Zimbabwean News

In an article featured on AllAfrica.com, an African online news source, on September 13, 2016, Zimbabwean author David Mungoshi writes about MI theory in relation to several esteemed Zimbabwean figures. This feature marks an exciting expansion in the reach of MI theory, as it is the first time MI has been featured in press in an African nation.

In the article, Mungoshi urges parents and teachers to consider MI theory as a resource to help guide their students and children to their dominant intelligences. He cites Kirsty Coventry, Olympic gold-medalist swimmer, and Charles Manyuchi, Silver Class World Boxing Champion, as examples of Zimbabweans who have honed their dominant intelligences to bring success and fame not only to themselves, but also to their country.

To read the article in full, visit the following website: http://allafrica.com/stories/201609130359.html

MI Theory as Foundation for Children's Learning Center in Hong Kong

A shopping mall in Hong Kong, called Discovery Park (D Park), has created a children’s educational facility based on the principals of MI theory. D Park aims to use its programs to teach parents and children in Hong Kong about the facets of MI theory and how to incorporate them into both their family and public education.

Keiko Ishiwata, President of Japan MI Society and lecturer at Yokohama National University, and Tomoe Fujimoto, Executive Director of Japan MI Society and President of Tomoe Soroban Co., Ltd., were invited to visit Discovery Park August 3rd to 6th, 2016 to give a presentation on MI Theory.

For more information of D Park, visit their website at: https://www.dpark.com.hk/en/home.html

And to learn more about Japan MI Society, visit their website at: http://www.japanmi.com/ 

Could "Green" Hospitals Encourage Naturalist Intelligence in Children?

An article, published in October 2016 in the Boston Globe, discusses Dr. Ann-Christine Duhaime's campaign to increase greenery in Mass General's Pediatric facilities.

Howard Gardner commented on this idea, saying:

"This article caught my eye. A pediatrician at major teaching hospital is attempting to instill nature into the hospitalization appearance. This will be done by setting up an atrium rich in flora. She hopes both to provide an appealing and calming milieu and to increase the young children’s sensitivity to their natural environment—and the threats posed by climate change.

As one who has posited the existence of a ‘naturalist intelligence’, I find this plan appealing. To be sure, we do not activate an intelligence simply by providing its components;  it’s important to have activities and exercises that develop discrimination, skills, and ultimately knowledge. But there is a long evolutionary history of human beings exploring nature so this immersion should not be difficult. In fact, it’s only in recent centuries that most human beings have moved away from rural areas, filled with plants and animals, to cities, where the experience of nature is mostly second hand.

One advantage of enhancing naturalist intelligence is that it does not simply operate with nature. Much of our consumer society as well as many of our artistic and scientific environments call for fine discrimination and careful classification. And so, the development of naturalist intelligence can have benefits for other spheres of life."

A link to the article is available here via the Boston Globe.

MI Press: First Quarter of 2017

The theory of multiple intelligences continues to receive attention from disparate communities and corners of the globe as MI is seemingly discovered and applied anew. Thus far in 2017, we have become aware of several MI-themed articles that we wanted to share with our readers.

Many writers appear to be inspired by MI's broad conception of human intellect, which takes into account abilities which are often not a component of formal education (such as interpersonal, interpersonal, and bodily-kinesthetic intelligences).

Click the links below to see what people are saying about MI in recent news!

Want to share more articles about MI or your own piece? Contact us or Tweet Howard Gardner @DrHowardGardner, and we can share your link.

Study of Learning Disorders: Evidence for MI Theory?

A study of the relationship between learning disorders and intellectual profiles, published in February 2017 in the journal Clinical Psychological Science, lends further empirical support to the theory of multiple intelligences.

Written by Enrico Toffalini, David Giofrè, and Cesare Cornoldi, the study sampled over 1,000 children diagnosed with specific learning disorders, revealing partial differences in intellectual profiles between subgroups.

Gardner commented on this finding, saying:

This large study of students with specific learning disabilities provides evidence for distinct multiple intelligences. Each of the four profiles has a revealing mixture of strengths and weaknesses. The study is especially notable because it focuses on difficulties in school—an institution which typically valorizes only linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences. One can readily assume that if one looks across the range of profiles of strengths and weaknesses, both in and outside of school, equally distinctive profiles would emerge.

A PDF of the article is available here via the Association for Psychological Science.