A Misunderstanding of MI Theory

The below recently appeared in The Washington Post Answer Sheet section by Valerie Strauss (click here for link).

It’s good to expose myths about neuroscience — but the debunking is getting out of hand, a world-famous psychologist says

If you believe that students have different “learning styles” — which many people do — you have succumbed to a “neuromyth,” which is a commonly held view about the results of brain research that isn’t actually true.

It’s one of many popular neuromyths that have been debunked in recent years, but it turns out, there’s also a problem with some of that debunking. In some cases, debunkers are wrong in their analysis or misunderstand the thing they are debunking. That’s the topic of this post, written by Howard Gardner, the world-renowned psychologist whose work has revolutionized the fields of education and psychology.

One of the most misunderstood brain theories over the past several decades is Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, which was advanced more than 35 years ago. The theory — explained in Gardner’s 1983 book “Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences” — said human beings had more than a single kind of intelligence and listed seven that work together: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal and intrapersonal. He later added an eighth, naturalist intelligence, and says there may be a few more.

The theory became highly popular with K-12 educators, many of whom thought “multiple intelligences” were synonymous with the concept of “learning styles.” Gardner never said that, though debunkers of his theory have claimed he did.

Gardner is now a professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and is an adjunct professor of psychology at Harvard University. He is the senior director of Harvard’s Project Zero, a research center that explores topics in education such as intelligence, creativity and ethics, and he directs the Good Project, initiatives that seek to prepare students to become good citizens and workers in society through education. The author of more than 30 books, he has been working on a large-scale national study about how different groups think about the goals of college and the value of studying liberal arts and sciences.

Most teachers believe that kids have different ‘learning styles.’ Here’s why they are wrong.

By Howard Gardner

We live in an age of debunking. It’s energizing to shoot down someone or something, and sometimes, that’s a good thing.

But when “debunking” gets out of hand, it needs to be called to account. And when you yourself are the target of a debunking, not surprisingly, you feel called upon to become the sheriff — the debunker of the debunkers, so to speak.

You may have heard the word “neuromyth” or the phrase “neural myth.” It’s used by researchers and, less frequently, by laypersons to describe a widely held belief that is not true. And indeed, there clearly are statements about the nervous system that deserve to be debunked.

Two examples:

• The brain has two hemispheres — left and right — and some people are left-brained, while others are right-brained.

• We only use 10 percent of our brain.

Each of these examples starts from a fact — we do have two cerebral hemispheres and they are not identical. But even as a metaphor, the leap to two kinds of persons is not warranted.

No doubt most of us could make better use of the brain. But how to determine what percentage is used, how to account for awake, sleep, dreaming and day dreaming is left completely unsolved — perhaps not even considered.

But a whole industry has grown in which various myths are delineated, exposed and presumably laid to rest. Yet, when one looks carefully at the assertions about the myths, many of the statements that are supposedly debunking something do not themselves withstand scrutiny.

Enter my own work. More than 35 years ago, I introduced the theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion of a single intelligence adequately probed by a single short answer test. In its place, I proposed that human beings have a number of relatively independent intellectual capacities. And in supporting this assertion, I drew on evidence from several scholarly disciplines, including the brain science of the day.

Never did I come close to asserting that these intelligences are inborn or genetic, or that they are completely independent of one another, or that people can be described as having one intelligence or another to the exclusion of the remaining ones. Nor did I make specific suggestions about education. I simply stated that individuals have different profiles of intelligences and that this claim should be taken into account when one is teaching, studying, assessing.

Yet, in an article published in 2019 in a well-regarded journal, I found multiple intelligences (MI) theory classified as a neural myth. And this article spurred me to look more carefully at how such myths are identified and dissected.

What I found was disturbing. The article distinguished between five statements that are presumably true, and five that are asserted to be neuromyths.

First of all, of the 10 statements, only six of them even mentioned the brain or the nervous system. And so 40 percent of them are not neural at all!

Second, those that were considered myths were expressed in hyperbolic form. “All,” “none” and “predominant”: Anyone with experience in taking (or making) tests would know that these statements are likely to be false.

Third, and in contrast to the previous point, those that were considered true were expressed in much less totalistic form — using hedges such as “likely” and “may.”

Fourth, and most telling, none of the statements actually requires mention of the brain. They are statements about learning, studying, remembering, each of which could have been — and perhaps was! — stated 100 or 1,000 years ago. The descriptor “neuro” is gratuitous.

My conclusion: The mission of neuromythology has gone too far. Obviously, all of us — researchers, teachers or members of the general public — should scrutinize statements carefully.

A few lessons:

• We should be wary of absolutist statements.

• Just as it is useful for educators to learn about psychology and sociology, we should attempt to learn what has been established about the brain and the nervous system. But we should never change our behaviors or teachings just because of new assertions about the brain. All education is concerned with values — and so we should always ask whether a recommended tactic is consistent with what we believe should be taught and learned and why we think so.

• Finally, perhaps it’s time to bracket the debunking phrase “neuromyths.” Instead, when we encounter an assertion — be it based on psychology, pedagogy or neuroscience — we should attempt to find out in what ways it is meritorious, or suspect, or not worth taking seriously. And if the latter, we should attempt to discover better ways to achieve the educational goals that we cherish.

The Power of an Open Mind

Howard Gardner was recently interviewed about MI theory in today’s world – one in which many of the old structures of work and education are breaking down. The following article by Annette MacKenzie appeared in World Magazine.

Harvard professor Howard Gardner has spent a lifetime understanding the way we learn and think – but one of his most important lessons is about the importance of keeping an open mind.

The list of academic awards on developmental psychologist Professor Howard Gardner’s CV is long, very long. From the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 1981, through 31 honorary degrees to more recent awards highlighting his role as an influential thinker in a number of fields, including business and ethics.

The John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he has written 30 books and several hundred articles and is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences (MI). After spending time working with both brain-damaged adults and gifted children in the late 1970s/early 1980s, he challenged the notion that there is a single human intelligence that can be measured by a standard IQ test. Instead he proposed that we all have a number of intelligences and we can be strong in some and weaker in others. These intelligences include linguistic, visual, musical, interpersonal and intrapersonal – the ability to know yourself.

The multiple intelligences theory transformed the fields of psychology and education and has gone on to be applied in many countries and in many different ways – some right and some wrong, according to Gardner, 76, who recently set up the Multiple Intelligences Oasis website to provide clarity on the theory. Meanwhile he has branched out in other directions and since the mid-1990s been director of The Good Project, which prepares students to become good workers and citizens, contributing to the overall wellbeing of society.

Here he shares his wisdom on how to survive – and thrive – in the 21st century:

In a recent Harvard Gazette interview you say: “The greatest gift you can have is an education, one that isn’t strictly professional.” Could you explain?

I have at least three reasons for this:

l. The job landscape is changing rapidly and preparation for any specific job may turn out to be out of touch with reality a few years from now.

2. Skills of writing, thinking, critiquing, synthesizing, communicating, collaborating are going to be important for the foreseeable future and these are best acquired via a wide-ranging education across topics and disciplines. That’s why people around the world want their children to go to Princeton or Amherst or Pomona or Dartmouth, rather than to engineering school or journalism school or veterinary school as undergraduates.

3. As an old person, I can say that a broad higher education is the greatest gift that you can give yourselves for the rest of your life. Because even after you can no longer run a mile or get on airplanes, you can still enjoy music, art, theater and especially fiction and non-fiction reading and discussion groups. And if you had a narrow education, that’s difficult to do. If you have a broad education, you are accumulating intellectual and cultural capital on which you can draw for the rest of your life.

When you think of work in the future, how do you see students being best prepared? Can we educate for a world that has not yet emerged?

I suppose that this statement was more true historically than most of us would realize. I knew my parents (born around 1910) and my grandparents (born about 1880) well enough to know that they could never have anticipated the events of the past 140 years.

So, yes, we can’t anticipate particular jobs and particular expertises that my grandchildren, born in this century, will need. But there are certain ‘basics’ or ‘constants’ or ‘essentials’. Among them are a sense of morality, integrity, ethics – that my colleagues and I focus on in thegoodproject.org – what it means to be a good worker and a good citizen.

Also, while it is certainly advantageous to know about computing, data analysis, and STEM topics and skills, I still believe that a broad multi-disciplinary education is essential for any age. And so I certainly want my own offspring to have an education that includes history, philosophy and the arts.

How do we – and should we – keep “building bridges rather than walls” across countries, societies, in universities and workplaces?

Of course we should build bridges rather than walls – even the most extreme left-winger or right-winger cannot provide a rational justification for wall-building rather than bridge-building.

But we have learnt that in the second decade of the 21st century, that has become increasingly difficult – and a surprising proportion of the US population seems to think that problems will be solved, rather than exacerbated, by building physical or psychological walls. And, alas, that’s not just true of the US, as I hardly need to remind those who live in Britain, Hungary, Turkey, Brazil, Venezuela or China.

There are no shortcuts. My own ‘formula’ is the development early in life of ‘neighbourly morality’ – roughly, the stances captured in the Golden Rule [the principle of treating others as you would wish them to treat you] and the Ten Commandments.

As one grows up in a complex interconnected world, one needs to add ‘the ethics of roles’ – what it means to be a good worker and a good citizen. Good workers and good citizens are informed; they do not assume that they have all the answers; they listen carefully to other points of view; and they are prepared to change their minds. Formulaically, it’s the Five D’s: they recognize Dilemmas and are prepared to Discuss, Debate, Decide and then Debrief, and reflect on what they ultimately decided and how they might do better next time.

This may not ensure bridges, but it certainly guards against defending walls at all costs. You avoid becoming a fundamentalist – a person with a commitment not to change his or her mind.

Are there circumstances when boundaries are important for discipline and achievement or is it better to keep ‘no limits’ as a mantra?

Life is short and there is no point in pretending that one can know everything or master everything. So even if one pursues ‘no limits’, one will not succeed. Still it’s good not to set up firm boundaries, because you risk closing your mind to something important. I am a fundamentalist on a few things – the importance of pursuing truth, use of the scientific method where appropriate, the centrality in life of artistic experiences – but otherwise, I try to keep my mind open and hope that those with whom I associate will do the same.

Will the ability to collaborate be increasingly important for the future? 

The ability to collaborate has always been important and there’s no reason to think that will change. However, in the future, we will need to collaborate with machines, robots, AI programs, and that’s a new challenge – for future generations!

Do you feel that enough attention has been paid to your idea of multiple intelligences? Or do schools and colleges use the idea only when there is a perceived problem – in the case of illness, such as brain damage, say, or a developmental disorder, such as dyslexia?

When I first wrote about multiple intelligences 40 years ago, I could never have anticipated in my wildest dreams that it would still dominate my mail and my invitations.

That said, like many other writers and theorists, I’m more likely to notice misuses or inadequate understandings than appropriate uses and interpretations.

The best source for ‘good uses’ is the 2009 book Multiple Intelligences Around the World in which 42 authors from 15 countries on five continents indicate prudent and imaginative educational programs based on MI theory. I also host a website – multipleintelligencesoasis.org  – where I regularly post ideas, blogs and practices that I like, as well as those about which I’m dubious.

Do you think that the average child is still judged on very narrow parameters?

Probably true. But, along with [psychologist and writer] Daniel Goleman and a few others, I think I have broadened and tempered the discussion all around the world – even for people and institutions who have never heard of me or of MI theory.

What is your best life lesson?

‘Choose your parents well.’ Of course, that’s a quip. But I do think that parents are the biggest influence on the ethical character of their children. I am lucky that my parents both had a strong moral compass, and I have tried to have a moral compass myself and to share it with my children, colleagues and students over the years.

Do you think morality matters more than success?

For me that’s an easy one. But one of the tragedies of our age – and probably of other eras as well – is that so many people see success – which is often viewed as fame and fortune – as more important than doing the right thing. I wish I lived at a time, and in a country, where people were judged not by the amount of money, possessions and headlines they have garnered before they are buried, but rather by the evidence that, when difficult issues arose, they tried to do the right thing.

What are the multiple intelligences?

While IQ tests assess linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence, and sometimes spatial intelligence, Professor Gardner states that humans have several other significant intellectual capacities or ‘intelligences’: musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal (social), intrapersonal (understanding of self), and naturalistic (the capacity to make consequential distinctions in the world of nature).

He has also speculated about two other possible intelligences: existential (the capacity to ponder questions about big issues, such as life, death, fairness and justice), and pedagogical (the intelligence that enables people to convey knowledge or skills to others).

Intertwining Multiple Intelligences and Good Work

By Howard Gardner

Close to forty years after I first began to write about the concept “Multiple Intelligences,” the topic still dominates my mailbox, with questions arising each day, often from scholars, researchers, or educators in remote corners of the world. And while nearly every question has been posed before, I try when possible to provide a succinct and useful response.

But I am also frustrated. Rarely if ever does a questioner talk about the uses to which the several intelligences are to be put. The assumption: It’s desirable in and of itself to discover what intelligences a person has and/or what intelligences can be cultivated; and that their uses (presumably benign) will take care of themselves.

Alas, that’s not the case. For decades, I have sought to make the point that intelligences are morally and ethically neutral. One can use the same intelligence for benign or malignant ends. The examples are familiar. Both Nelson Mandela and Slobodan Milosevic had plenty of interpersonal intelligence. Mandela used his interpersonal intelligence to inspire his fellow citizens as well as human beings around the world; Milosevic used his interpersonal intelligence to foster ethnic hatred and ultimately genocidal endeavors. 

By the same token, both Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Joseph Goebbels had considerable linguistic intelligence (in German). Goethe used this talent to write great prose and poetry; Goebbels used his linguistic intelligence to create the vilest forms of propaganda. And one could make the same point about each of the remaining intelligences—musical, spatial, bodily, naturalist, logical—though it’s quite difficult to delineate a malignant use of intrapersonal intelligence—perhaps masochism.

I propose a new set of “rules of the road.” From now on, when I am asked about “MI,” I will respond, “To what uses do you propose to put the intelligence or intelligences in which you are interested?” By this “move,” I hope to nudge people towards considering the values that they are seeking to promote (and, at least by implication, those values that they would spurn or work hard to abolish). And perhaps, once they reveal what they would like to achieve with a battery of intelligences—or, for that matter, through activation of a specific intelligence—then we can consider how best to achieve that goal. Or, if the goal seems pointless or destructive, we should engage the correspondent in a discussion of ends and means.

Of course, once one begins to discuss what is good, and what is not, we enter the domains of values—an area which scientists (as well as many non-scientists) are wary of. It’s okay to minimize the issue of values when one is discussing atoms or genes—but that neutrality can be pushed too far. After all, atoms can be split to produce energy—and that energy can be used for benign or malignant purposes. So too, we can now create and manipulate genes—again, for positive or questionable purposes.

And so, as we touch upon these issues, we enter a domain that my colleagues and I have been working on almost as long as the study of intelligences: what it means to be good, and what it means to do good. This is the province of what we now call The Good Project. We have sought to identify the three components (the three Es, represented as a “triple helix”) of good work: good work is technically Excellent; it is personally Engaging; and it is carried out in an Ethical manner.

By the same token, we have identified the three components of good citizenship.  Once again, the good citizen is excellent—he or she knows the laws; is engaged—cares about what happens in the society; and, again tries to carry out duties in an ethical way.

What of the spheres in which “goodness” is manifest? For thousands of  years, individuals have pondered how to deal with others in their immediate circle—what we have termed “neighborly morality.” The key tenets of neighborly morality are captured in the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments and other fundamental sayings, proverbs, tales and, in recent millennia, texts that arise and circulate within an identified community.

But over this period, societies have become more complex, Human relations have become increasingly transactional and are carried out over long distances. In this changed and increasingly global environment, it’s important to delineate a new set of roles—which we call the role of worker/professional and the role of citizen. It becomes important to define the rights, but also the obligations, of those who spend a fair amount of their lives in a community of workers or a community of citizens. To encompass this terrain, and to complement neighborly morality, we have coined the phrase “the ethics of roles.”

Even carrying out neighborly morality can be difficult. And once one contemplates the newer roles of worker and citizen, a determination of what is ethical, and what is not, constitutes a considerable challenge. There is no formula for ascertaining the ethical—in fact, an issue becomes an ethical one precisely because it does not permit of an easy, formulaic solution.  

To make progress on tackling this terrain, on tackling specific ethical issues, we find it useful to delineate—in rough order of activation and application—several Ds:

• Dilemma (recognized as such initially or pointed out by a knowledgeable individual)

• Discussion or debate about the dilemma, how best to articulate and approach is resolution

• Decision (and resulting action or inaction)

• Debriefing, about what happened, and whether the dilemma could have been handled more effectively, and how to handle a similar one when it arises in the future.

It is easiest to think of the deliberative process as involving language. But one can also contemplate ethical dilemmas as they are portrayed in works of art—for example, dramas or documentaries or even scrolls or paintings. And of course, these are matters of the heart, as well as of the head.

Deciding what is good, and then pursuing the good, have never been easy. And in the time of the Internet, digital media, social networks, artificial intelligence, deep learning, and the like, it is harder than ever. Misinformation is more rampant  than ever before, and it is often more widely circulated and more easily accepted than is well-researched, reliable information.

But unless we want to toss a coin, or disregard “the good” altogether, we have no choice but to marshal our strongest resources, seek to delineate and defend what we believe to be good, and then achieve it.

And perhaps—and this is my fondest hope—we can mobilize our several intelligences to determine both what is good and how best to realize it.

Can Artificial Intelligence Help or Hinder Educators?

This article by Geoff Johnson raises the interesting question of where AI can be helpful to educators, and where it may fall short. Certainly, AI has its advantages—as Johnson points out, teachers can spend more time actually teaching, and less time grading, setting short answer tests, keeping attendance records, organizing syllabi, and the like. And it is also possible that, as we learn more about students’ strengths and challenges, we can tailor educational software to the learner’s profiles. I have termed this possibility “individuation.”

But it’s more difficult to envision how an AI program can establish a personal relationship with a student, one in which the student’s needs and aspirations are taken into account. And most important, as educators, at our best, we provide a model—the most salient model other than parents—of how one deals with the various challenges and opportunities that life affords. I shudder to think about what it will mean to be a human being if this role is downloaded onto an avatar. Long live positive human role models!

Click here to read the full article by Geoff Johnson.

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.”