School, The Mind, and Multiple Intelligences

Many of us have heard of Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Just as many of us think of MI as a justification for classrooms that accommodate many sensory modalities and provide multiple entry points for learning to take place. And why not? Multimodal learning and providing multiple entry points for learners are considered to be best practices in pedagogy these days. Dr. Gardner would certainly be behind such efforts, but he would also be the first to say that his theory of Multiple Intelligences was never intended to justify these pedagogical practices. This comes from one of Gardner's students, now a Professor in his own right:

...neither Gardner nor MI theory has ever argued that educators should spend equal amounts of time teaching to the eight intelligences, or that every lesson should provide students with eight options for demonstrating their learning. In fact, MI theory offers neither a curriculum nor a goal toward which educators are expected to strive. Rather, MI theory is an idea about the concept of intelligence. A psychologist by training, Gardner left it to educators to decide how MI theory can be useful in the particular community and context in which they teach.

Or, if you'd rather, from Gardner himself:

“Multiple intelligences” should not in and of itself be an educational goal. Educational goals need to reflect one’s own values, and these can never come simply or directly from a scientific theory. Once one reflects on one’s educational values and states one’s educational goals, however, then the putative existence of our multiple intelligences can prove very helpful. And, in particular, if one’s educational goals encompass disciplinary understanding, then it is possible to mobilize our
several intelligences to help achieve that lofty goal.

We look to research and theory in psychology for answers to educational problems. Multiple Intelligences, for many, has been incorrectly touted as that answer. But rather than being pointers on how to organize one's classroom, MI theory is Dr. Gardner's contribution to the academic dialogue. It is an extension of one school of thought in cognitive psychology called modularity, which was originally championed by Jerry Fodor in 1983. Modularity describes each of our minds as an assembly of independently functioning basic abilities. Fodor believes that we have separate parts of our brains (that probably map onto separate parts of our minds) that are equipped to different tasks: process language, perceive and interpret the movement of things in space, interpret information from our senses, intuitively understand others' minds, and so on. Part of MI's theory as an offshoot of Fodor's modularity is that the different intelligence domains that Gardner suggests (kinesthetic, logical-mathematical, interpersonal, and so on) function independently. That is, according to the theory, if a person has a very keen sense of numbers and logic, that has nothing to do with their ability to throw a ball accurately (kinesthetic intelligence) or be empathic (interpersonal intelligence).

Recent research in cognitive science and neuroscience, however, reveal that there are more connections between these alleged intelligences or abilities than was originally thought. Annette Karmiloff Smith, in 1992, argued that these separate silos of intelligence are not innate, but actually are cultivated as the mind develops. Our many intelligences, then, are malleable and subject to change. That is, every person's life experience shapes their "intelligence."

More importantly, it's more correctly thought that our many "intelligences" are constantly interacting with one another. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, in a recent Lecture at Sacred Heart Prepatory, pointed out all the different things that happen in our brains when it gets hit with one piece of information. For example, as you read the word BABY, several associations are probably conjured: an image of an infant sleeping or crying, a specific memory that we might have had with a baby, the lyrics to a recent pop song, our college course on human development, and so on. Beneath the surface, several mental faculties are at work: your visual system, a system that recognizes written language, certain systems that direct your attention, and so on. Some associations are sprung from the well of long-term memory, others are images, still others are associated with words or sounds. Some associations are made possible by brain processes that happen below the conscious level. In short, there is an incredible cascade of mental events put into action by the simplest piece of information we take in. Each association is a special combination of our intelligences, and often uses more than one. Two things are illuminating here: 1) every individual conjures different associations in different parts of their mind from the same stimulus, and 2) those associations are learned, shaped by our development and our experience.

This last version of our minds is much more informative and useful to educators. We do not learn with one intelligence, even if information is presented in one way. We learn, and learn best, by incorporating all the mind's faculties in concert. A la Immordino-Yang, The more associations and connections we can mentally make with a new piece of information, the more deeply we will have "learned" it. And, a la Karmiloff-Smith, the more we are engaged in this sort of thing, and the more experience we have developing our minds, the better we will have learned. Conveniently, these lessons lead educators to similar conclusions as they have reached with MI theory: differentiated instruction, multimodal learning, and forging a personal connection to the material.