Summary
Howard Gardner was born in 1943 in Pennsylvania. His parents fled from Germany five years earlier with his three year old brother who was killed right before Howard’s birth in a sleighing accident. These two events were not discussed when Howard was a child, but they had a huge impact on his thinking and development. (Gardner, 1989) Howard was not allowed to participate in much physical activity and was encouraged to pursue creative and intellectual activities.
Howard Gardner’s work with multiple intelligences has had a major impact on thinking and practice in education, especially in the United States. A number of schools in North America have looked to design classrooms and even entire schools to reflect the understandings that Howard Gardner develops and to structure curricula according to the intelligences. His theory on Multiple Intelligences has helped educators to look beyond the traditional course of skilling, curriculum and testing and on to broaden their focus on what might assist people to live their lives well.
“In the heyday of the psychometric and behaviorist eras, it was generally believed that intelligence was a single entity that was inherited; and that human beings – initially a blank slate – could be trained to learn anything, provided that it was presented in an appropriate way. Nowadays an increasing number of researchers believe precisely the opposite; that there exists a multitude of intelligences, quite independent of each other; that each intelligence has its own strengths and constraints; that the mind is far from unencumbered at birth; and that it is unexpectedly difficult to teach things that go against early ‘naive’ theories of that challenge the natural lines of force within an intelligence and its matching domains.” (Gardner 1993: xxiii)
Howard Gardner initially created a list of seven intelligences but has since added two more to the list. The Nine Types of Intelligence are:
References:
Gardner, Howard (1989) To Open Minds: Chinese clues to the dilemma of contemporary education, New York: Basic Books.
Gardner, Howard (1993) Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences, New York: Basic Books.
Smith, Mark K. (2002, 2008) ‘Howard Gardner and multiple intelligences’, the encyclopedia of informal education, http://www.infed.org/mobi/howard-gardner-multiple-intelligences-and-education.
Howard Gardner was born in 1943 in Pennsylvania. His parents fled from Germany five years earlier with his three year old brother who was killed right before Howard’s birth in a sleighing accident. These two events were not discussed when Howard was a child, but they had a huge impact on his thinking and development. (Gardner, 1989) Howard was not allowed to participate in much physical activity and was encouraged to pursue creative and intellectual activities.
Howard Gardner’s work with multiple intelligences has had a major impact on thinking and practice in education, especially in the United States. A number of schools in North America have looked to design classrooms and even entire schools to reflect the understandings that Howard Gardner develops and to structure curricula according to the intelligences. His theory on Multiple Intelligences has helped educators to look beyond the traditional course of skilling, curriculum and testing and on to broaden their focus on what might assist people to live their lives well.
“In the heyday of the psychometric and behaviorist eras, it was generally believed that intelligence was a single entity that was inherited; and that human beings – initially a blank slate – could be trained to learn anything, provided that it was presented in an appropriate way. Nowadays an increasing number of researchers believe precisely the opposite; that there exists a multitude of intelligences, quite independent of each other; that each intelligence has its own strengths and constraints; that the mind is far from unencumbered at birth; and that it is unexpectedly difficult to teach things that go against early ‘naive’ theories of that challenge the natural lines of force within an intelligence and its matching domains.” (Gardner 1993: xxiii)
Howard Gardner initially created a list of seven intelligences but has since added two more to the list. The Nine Types of Intelligence are:
- Linguistic Intelligence
- Musical Intelligence
- Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
- Visual-Spatial Intelligence
- Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence
- Intrapersonal Intelligence
- Interpersonal Intelligence
- Naturalist Intelligence (added later)
- Existential Intelligence (added later)
References:
Gardner, Howard (1989) To Open Minds: Chinese clues to the dilemma of contemporary education, New York: Basic Books.
Gardner, Howard (1993) Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences, New York: Basic Books.
Smith, Mark K. (2002, 2008) ‘Howard Gardner and multiple intelligences’, the encyclopedia of informal education, http://www.infed.org/mobi/howard-gardner-multiple-intelligences-and-education.