In this episode, Monica shares how she and a team conducted action research to discover whether choice would lead to greater engagement in assessments and learning at the middle school level. While sharing that story, she pointed out that their school counselor is a “Gardner guru,” referencing Howard Gardner’s work on multiple intelligences. Later, she talked about the counselor’s use of multiple intelligences (MI) to help the students identify their strengths.
Referencing Gardner’s work provides a wonderful opportunity to remind everyone of his intent when he published information about MI. In fact, Gardner clarified his work in a Washington Post article printed on October 16, 2013, titled, “Howard Gardner: ‘Multiple intelligences’ are not ‘learning styles.’(Strauss).
Through his work on multiple intelligences, Gardner’s goal was to dissuade people from believing that we have a single overarching intelligence that defines how well we will do in life. Instead, Gardner believes there are a series of 8 different intelligences including: intrapersonal, interpersonal, logical-mathematical, naturalist, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, linguistic, and musical (www.multipleintelligencesoasis.org). The theory suggests that due to the interconnectivity of our brains, we inherently experience these different intelligences simultaneously and we experience them based on context. While a person may show a propensity toward one or another, that doesn’t mean it defines that person. He uses the example of a person who has the ability to acquire a new language quickly. That person might have a higher linguistic intelligence, but this does not lock this person into a type or style.
At some point, individuals and groups began talking and writing about learning styles. Definitions were created and assessments soon followed. As Gardner points out, though, there are no criteria to back up the definitions and these styles do not hold true across context. Here’s an example. Some people refer to themselves as “auditory” learners, but this style fails to recognize how our brain works. For example, a person might appear to learn best when the learning is attached to music, but not when listening to podcasts. Both are auditory actions (i.e., they make use of hearing), but use different cognitive faculties. The brain works differently even though the “input” is through the ears. To identify a learner with a type of style or to have that learner identify themselves as a specific type of style (a) denies what we know about how the brain functions, and (b) can mislead a learner to characterize themselves in an ill-defined and limiting way.
Through the UDL Lens
In that same article, Gardner provides recommendations that I provide here via the UDL lens. First, he calls on us to individualize. He calls for educators to help learners discover ways they find comfortable to learn and support them in those ways. In the UDL community, we build that into the design via choice (as Monica and her peers did for their action research). An important key here is to help learners find ways of learning, not one way, because there is not a single way for any learner to experience learning. Second, he asks teachers to “pluralize” their teaching by teaching topics and skills in a variety of ways. This is at the very heart of UDL and the Principle of Representation. When we use multiple means and methods to demonstrate topics and skills, we are able to connect with all of our learners, providing them opportunities to learn more thoroughly. Finally, Gardner asks us to drop the term “styles.” It’s confusing and has no research-base unlike the principles, guidelines, and checkpoints of UDL as well as the concept of variability.
Currently, there is no MI test and, in fact, Gardner pushes against self-assessment to specifically define oneself (read here). What he does want people to do is understand the interrelationship between our intelligences. He has online activities at the posted link so people can experience these connections.
Ultimately, Gardner doesn’t want us to assess ourselves. He wants us to explore and understand these different parts of ourselves. So, instead of asking your students to assess themselves, allow them the ability to explore and make their own discoveries through choice and reflection. That is, after all, how we support the development of expert learners.