Theory of multiple intelligences

Dr. Gardner

The first who spoke about the theory of multiple intelligences was Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University. He developed his theory in “Frames of mind”, published in 1983. In this text, he want to overcome the traditional notion that intelligence can be “measured” with verbal and standardized instrument, such as tests based on short answers, and reduced to a number, the IQ.
Instead Dr Gardener proposes different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults. These intelligences are:

• Linguistic intelligence ("word smart"):
• Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart")
• Spatial intelligence ("picture smart")
• Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")
• Musical intelligence ("music smart")
• Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart")
• Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")

The Seven Intelligences
1. Linguistic intelligence
It is the ability to use words in an effectual way, speaking and writing. This intelligence includes:

- The ability to use easier the words
- The ability to explain, teach, learn
- The ability to persuade other people
- Meta-linguistic analysis
- Humour based on the words
- Verbal memory

2. Logical-mathematical intelligence
It is the ability to use numbers in an effectual way. This intelligence includes:

- The ability to recognise abstract models
- Inductive reasoning
- Deductive reasoning
- The ability to recognise relations and connections
- The ability to do difficult calculations
- Scientific mind

3. Spatial intelligence
It is the ability to perceive the spatial world in an accurate way and to operate transformation on these perceptions. This intelligence includes:

- Active imagination
- Bump of locality
- The ability to create mental figures
- The ability to represent graphically
- The ability to recognise relations of objects in the space
- Visual memory

4. Bodily-Kinaesthetic intelligence
It is the ability to use the body to express ideas and emotions and to use the hands to create or transform objects. This intelligence includes:

- The ability to direct voluntary body’s movements
- The ability to do body’s programmed movements
- The ability to express feelings through the body
- Mimetic abilities

5. Musical intelligence
It is the ability to perceive, transform, express musical forms. This intelligence includes:

- The ability to appreciate music’s structure and rhythm.
- Sensibility to sounds
- The ability to recognise, create and play a sound, a rhythm, a music, a tone
- The ability to appreciate the qualities of tones and rhythms.

6. Interpersonal intelligence
It is the ability to perceive and interpret the feelings, the reasons, the intentions, the emotions of other people. This intelligence includes:

- The ability verbal and no-verbal communication
- Sensibility for the feelings and the emotions of other people
- The ability to create and maintain “synergy”
- The ability to listen and understand other people
- Empathy
- The ability to work in a group in a cooperative way

7. Intrapersonal intelligence
It is the ability to recognise yourself and to act basing on this cognise. This intelligence includes:

- Mental concentration
- Memory and attention
- Meta-cognition (“thinking about thinking”)
- Conscience of your emotions
- Spiritual conscience

Then, Gardner add an other intelligence, the naturalistic intelligence. Who has a naturalistic intelligence shows:
- Communion with nature
- Sensibility for flora and fauna
- Ability to bring-up animals or cultivates vegetables
- Interaction with nature
- Ability to recognise and classify natural objects

Dr Gardner think that could exist an other intelligence: the existential intelligence. It is the ability to think about the main themes of our existence and the propensity to the abstract reasoning.

So, each person has 8 intelligences, at least: each person is intelligent in 8 different ways. Somebody of us has high level in all intelligences, somebody developed only some of them. But everybody can develop all different intelligences and can arrive to satisfactory levels.


Everybody is intelligent: the ways to reinforce our intelligence/s
Dr. Gardner says that our schools and culture focus most of their attention on linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence. We esteem the highly articulate or logical people of our culture. However, Dr. Gardner says that we should also place equal attention on individuals who show gifts in the other intelligences: the artists, architects, musicians, naturalists, designers, dancers, therapists, entrepreneurs, and others who enrich the world in which we live. Unfortunately, many children who have these gifts don’t receive much reinforcement for them in school. Many of these kids, in fact, end up being labeled "learning disabled," "ADD (attention deficit disorder," or simply underachievers, when their unique ways of thinking and learning aren’t addressed by a heavily linguistic or logical-mathematical classroom. The theory of multiple intelligences proposes a major transformation in the way our schools are run. It suggests that teachers be trained to present their lessons in a wide variety of ways using music, cooperative learning, art activities, role play, multimedia, field trips, inner reflection, and much more. The good news is that the theory of multiple intelligences has grabbed the attention of many educators around the country, and hundreds of schools are currently using its philosophy to redesign the way it educates children. The bad new is that there are thousands of schools still out there that teach in the same old dull way, through dry lectures, and boring worksheets and textbooks. The challenge is to get this information out to many more teachers, school administrators, and others who work with children, so that each child has the opportunity to learn in ways harmonious with their unique minds.
The theory of multiple intelligences also has strong implications for adult learning and development. Many adults find themselves in jobs that do not make optimal use of their most highly developed intelligences (for example, the highly bodily-kinaesthetic individual who is stuck in a linguistic or logical desk-job when he or she would be much happier in a job where they could move around, such as a recreational leader, a forest ranger, or physical therapist). The theory of multiple intelligences gives adults a whole new way to look at their lives, examining potentials that they left behind in their childhood (such as a love for art or drama) but now have the opportunity to develop through courses, hobbies, or other programs of self-development.

Dr. R. J. Sternberg
In 1994 Dr. R. J. Sternberg developed an other theory about the multiple intelligences. For him, the human mind is based on three types of intelligences: analytic, practice and creative intelligence.
The analytic mind can compare, examine, value, explain the causes.
The practice mind permit to use instrument, organize, create real project, demonstrate how do something.
The creative intelligence is characterise by the intuition, imagination, discovery, by the ability to create something new, to do hypothesis, to imagine, to invent.