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Multiple Intelligences



Howard Gardner, a leading psychologist, proposes that educators should move toward educating multiple intelligences. In this philosophy, linguistic (writing) and analytic (math/science) are only two facets.

In his books, Frames of Mind and Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice, he emphasizes that we all have strengths, weaknesses, and unique combinations of cognitive abilities. Gardner says that people have at least EIGHT distinct intellectual capacities that they use to approach problems and create products. They are as follows:


1)Verbal/linguistic intelligence which draws on the individual's language skills, oral and written, to express what's on the person's mind and to understand other people.

2)Logical-mathematical intelligence is a person's ability to understand principles of some kind of causal system, like a scientist does, or to manipulate numbers, quantities, and operations, like a mathematician does.

3)Spatial intelligence refers to the ability to represent the spatial world internally in the mind, like a chess player or sculptor does.

4)Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence is the capacity to use your whole body or parts of your body to solve a problem, make something, or put on some kind of production, like that of an athlete or a performing artist.

5)Musical intelligence is the capacity to "think" in music and to be able to hear patterns and recognize, remember, and manipulate them.

6)Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to understand other people, an ability that we all need but is particularly important for teachers, salespeople, and politicians.

7)Intrapersonal intelligence refers to having an understanding of yourself and knowing your preferences, capabilities, and deficiencies.

8)Naturalist intelligence refers to the ability to discriminate among living things (plants and animals) and to have sensitivity towards features of the natural world, such as rock formations and clouds.



Page by Mosum Trivedi Sources:
Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1985); Howard Gardner, Multiple Intelligences: Theory in Practice (New York: Basic Books, 1993).
Kathy Checkley, "The Frist Seven...and the Eighth," Educational Leadership 55 (September 1997), p. 12.