Multiple Intelligences

In his book, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Howard Gardner suggests that we each have multiple intelligences. He describes intelligence as “a set of problem-solving skills, enabling the individual to resolve genuine problems or difficulties that he or she encounters and, when appropriate, to create an effective product; it also entails the potential for finding or creating problems, thereby laying the groundwork for the acquisition of new knowledge.” Gardner theorizes that each of these intelligences is relatively independent of the others, with its own timetable for development, peak growth, and a sensitive period. Each operates from a different part of the brain. Each is valued in ALL cultures.

Writing ITI curriculum using the multiple intelligences ensures choice for learners. There are many ways to problem-solve. Allowing students to choose their best way is a victory for both student and teacher because what is being learned is the same; it is how it is learned that varies.

To grasp the power of this theory, one must strike a distinction between how students take in information through the senses (what in the past has been referred to as the visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile modalities) versus how students process information once inside their brain to first make meaning of the input and then to use the meaning to act upon the world. Gardner’s focus, and ours, is how information—which comes in from all nineteen senses gets processed.

Taken from:

ITI: THE MODEL – Integrated Thematic Instruction

By Susan Kovalik with Karen Olsen