The Lasting Impact of Multiple Intelligences

As Harvard Graduate School of Education celebrates its centennial, Howard Gardner recently spoke to Jill Anderson on The Lasting Impact of Multiple Intelligences.

The video directed by Jill Anderson and edited by Elio Pajares is available here.

“In 1983, in one of the most influential books in a peerlessly influential career, Howard Gardner upended popularly accepted notions of how children think and learn. He proposed, in Frames of Mind, that there was not just a single intelligence that could be measured by one IQ test, but multiple intelligences — many ways of learning and knowing.

With his best-known work, Howard Gardner shifted the paradigm and ushered in an era of personalized learning.

The notion of multiple intelligences — and Gardner’s follow-up ideas about teaching individual students in the ways they can best learn, and teaching important concepts in multiple ways, for many access points — shifted the paradigm, ushering in an era of personalized learning whose promise is still being explored.

Gardner never rested at multiple intelligences. In an award-winning career — which has included MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, the University of Louisville’s Grawemeyer Award in Education, and innumerable honorary degrees — he’s focused on ethical development, citizenship (including digital citizenship), professionalism, and the value of college and the liberal arts. He may have retired from teaching in 2019, but his work continues.”

New Memoir by Howard Gardner

In 2020, a new memoir by Howard Gardner will be published by MIT Press.

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From MIT Press

A SYNTHESIZING MIND

A Memoir from the Creator of Multiple Intelligences Theory

Howard Gardner’s Frames of Mind was that rare publishing phenomenon—a mind-changer. Widely read by the general public as well as by educators, this influential book laid out Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. It debunked the primacy of the IQ test and inspired new approaches to education; entire curricula, schools, museums, and parents’ guides were dedicated to the nurturing of the several intelligences. In his new book, A Synthesizing Mind, Gardner reflects on his intellectual development and his groundbreaking work, tracing his evolution from bookish child to eager college student to disengaged graduate student to Harvard professor.

Gardner discusses his mentors (including Erik Erikson and Jerome Bruner) and his collaborators (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, William Damon, and others). Comedian Groucho Marx makes a surprise (non-)appearance, declining Gardner’s invitation to chat with Harvard College students, in favor of “making a living.”

Throughout his career, Gardner has focused on human minds in general, or on the minds of particular creators and leaders. Reflecting now on his own mind, he concludes that his is a “synthesizing mind”—with the ability to survey experiences and data across a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. The thinkers he most admires—including historian Richard Hofstadter, biologist Charles Darwin, and literary critic Edmund Wilson—are exemplary synthesizers. Gardner contends that the synthesizing mind is particularly valuable at this time and proposes ways to cultivate a possibly unique human capacity.

Howard Gardner is John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Best known as the originator of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, he is the author of thirty books, including Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences; Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed; and The App Generation (with Katie Davis).

My Thoughts on "Emotional Intelligence"

By Howard Gardner

Quite often I am confused with the individuals who created the phrase “emotional intelligence” (researchers Peter Salovey and John Mayer) or with the author who made it world famous (Daniel Goleman). But ordinarily I don’t use the phrase emotional intelligence myself.

This article (click here for link) caught my attention because of the claim that emotional intelligence contributes significantly to academic success. Accordingly, in contemplating this research, I thought about its relation to two forms of intelligence that I identified in the early 1980s.

It should come as no surprise that individuals with high emotional intelligence are ones who can understand the feelings of others, build strong relationships with others, help them, and be themselves helped by peers as well as by teachers or other persons. These are all signs of interpersonal intelligence  But I was also pleased to learn that individuals who display emotional intelligence are able to engage with their own psychological states—boredom, anger, anxiety—and to deal with them effectively. In my “MI” lexicon, these latter capacities fall under the rubric of intrapersonal intelligence.

When I originally wrote about the then seven intelligences, I devoted a separate chapter to each of them—linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, and bodily-kinesthetic. But I deliberately treated both interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence in one chapter. And here was my reasoning. It’s possible to be stronger in one kind of personal intelligence than in another—but in all probability, there is a closer tie between the two personal intelligences than any other pair of intelligences.

Read the full article here: https://www.inverse.com/article/61671-emotional-intelligence-is-key-factor-for-success.

The Ranking of U.S. States by Intelligence

Howard Gardner was recently asked by The Epoch Times to comment on a new study by SafeHome which ranked U.S. States by intelligence. Gardner’s response to the study was as follows:

“The question of which states are smart makes for an amusing party game, but I don’t take it seriously otherwise,” he said. “It makes no more sense than to ask which countries are smarter.”

“Germany might have been the highest scorer in 1914 and in 1939, and they triggered two disastrous world wars,” he said. “Putting on a judicial hat, I’d say ‘case dismissed.’”

Gardner noted that SafeHome’s use of more than one indicator to weigh various factors is “a positive,” but the overall approach might ignore more nuanced complexities.

“The deeper question is: What is meant by intelligence, and to what extent can intellect be measured by standard instruments?” he said.

Click here to read the full article: https://www.theepochtimes.com/california-barely-above-average-among-smartest-states-but-is-the-data-accurate_3164835.html.