Joseph Walters
Harvard University

INTRODUCTION

Like many urban areas, Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, contains a number of restaurants that open onto sidewalks and public spaces. On a pleasant Sunday morning, one such area, near the center of the Square, is filled with people who have come together to talk, play games, and read. Clusters of players and spectators are engrossed in games of chess and backgammon; a musician plays an amplified guitar; a juggler performs in an open space; the Times crossword puzzle is the subject of debate at one table; and, of course, the entire area is filled with animated conversation.

What struck the author about this scene, especially as he was gathering ideas for this paper, was the diversity of the human skills on display in this small space. As he looked about, he could easily pick out a variety of pursuits and challenges -- the games of chess and backgammon, word puzzles, musical and kinesthetic performances, social interaction, and so on. And yet, nothing in this scene was unusual. The diversity that he was seeing was completely familiar.

Another striking feature of this scene was how much of it builds on problem solving. Games like chess and backgammon allow the players to pose problems for one another. Puzzles are taken up as a challenge posed by the puzzle's author. Performances in music and movement require the solution of problems of a different sort.

This scene was a reminder of the need that humans have to create challenges and pose problems as a form of recreation. What's more, there is an inevitable variety to the nature of those challenges. For one person, chess is a fascinating and fulfilling game, while for a second person chess is impenetrable, a foreign language. The crossword puzzle for these two people may appeal in just the opposite manner.

What is it about humans that yields this intellectual diversity? And how is this diversity reflected in learning? In this paper, the author will introduce a theoretical treatment of the concept of intelligence that provides for this diversity and will contrast this view with the more traditional notion of intelligence. Next, he will draw from this theory several implications for education, paying particular attention to the question of assessment. He will try to show why this view of intelligence forces us to rethink some of the fundamental assumptions we hold about the assessment of learning. Finally, he will draw from the discussion of “multiple intelligences” and assessment a consideration of several specific implications for bilingual and multicultural learning.

The Question of Intelligence

To begin, the author defines the term intelligence as an individual's ability to solve problems or fashion products. In the traditional view -- one held by many psychologists -- intelligence is a human trait that varies from one individual to the next such that the individual with a great deal of this trait (the more intelligent individual) is more adept at solving problems and fashioning products. Indeed, it doesn't matter what the problem is. For any problem the highly intelligent person will be more likely to solve it than the less intelligent person.

To examine or test this trait in individuals, psychologists have constructed a large set of test problems and asked people to solve them. From the solutions offered to these test problems (some individuals solve these problems more accurately, quickly, insightfully, and so on) the psychologists predict which individuals will be most likely to solve any problem accurately and insightfully. In fact, the actual problems on the test aren't of particular interest and they are often quite trivial. “Who wrote The Iliad?” Or, “Recite these digits backwards, 2,5,3,4,7.” Questions like these do not in themselves pose interesting problems but the psychologists use them to identify those individuals who are most effective problem solvers. Since there is a single trait of intelligence, these tests, with their rather trivial questions, identify all individuals who are well endowed with that trait. Psychologists then predict that those highly-endowed individuals will most likely display intelligent behavior in the future.

This traditional view of intelligence as a singular trait presents us with a difficulty. When we try to apply it to human behavior in the world, we find that many people who display particular talents and proclivities do not “test well” on our measures of intelligence. For example, in the Harvard Square street scene, we may find that the backgammon player can answer certain questions on the IQ test quite accurately but has trouble with others; the musician displays a very different pattern of answers. In other words, we can identify talented individuals in the world, but we do not find that the trait of intelligence, as revealed by intelligences tests, has much to do with these talents. Indeed, when we look at the variety of things that people can do, we begin to think that there might be more to “intelligence.”

We are left with this problem: We recognize “intelligence” as an important construct in understanding how humans learn and solve problems, but the traditional view of intelligence and the tests that have been designed to appraise it are too limited in scope. Human performance appears to be too complex and diverse to be captured in this single dimension. What we are left looking for, then, is a theory of intelligence that can reflect the complexity of skills and performances that humans exhibit in the world. By examining those skills, we might reason backwards to the “intelligences” that must be responsible.

The Theory of Multiple Intelligences

The theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI) takes this perspective as its starting point. Developed by Howard Gardner and described in his book Frames of Mind (1983), the theory posits seven distinct and universal capacities. These capacities, or intelligences, are innately endowed in all humans; but at the same time, they are manifested quite differently in different cultures. For example, the linguistic intelligence, an innate and universal capacity found in all societies, can appear through writing in one culture, public speaking in a second, and a secret anagrammatic code in a third. Or the spatial intelligence, another ability found in all societies, is displayed in many different ways, from navigation, to the game of chess, to the science of geometry. So, the intelligences are innate and universal, but they are distinctly shaped by the cultures they appear in.

To be useful, the capacities that we identify must be relatively few in number. A theory with too many capacities that were too finely sliced would be less interesting theoretically and much less useful to practitioners. The candidate capacities, to be certified as intelligences, must also be established as distinct and independent on empirical grounds. For example, we know from studies of brain damage, that the linguistic capacity can be damaged while other cognitive functions remain unchanged; this indicates that the linguistic function is separate from those other functions. Studies of idiot savants, who display one skill at a sophisticated level and yet are well below normal in other areas, again help identify distinct cognitive functions. Research from child development, child prodigies, cross cultural investigations, as well as the traditional research of psychological training studies and psychometric research complete the empirical criteria that are applied to candidate skills. Only those faculties for which there is reasonably strong evidence are included in the list of multiple intelligences.

Seven faculties survive this test. Next, I will examine these seven and make several observations about each one.

Linguistic Intelligence

Although it is easy to accept the idea that linguistic skill is an intelligence -- almost all tests of intelligence contain items that reveal this faculty -- we also find evidence from our various sources to include it. For one thing, there is a very specific region of the brain, “Broca's Area,” that is responsible for interpreting linguistic information. Also, stroke victims reveal a loss of the linguistic faculty while other cognitive processes remain unchanged. A person with damage to Broca's Area can understand words but cannot assemble these components into anything other than the simplest sentences.

We can also find examples of child prodigies in the linguistic realm. For example, T.S. Eliot, at the age of ten during his winter vacation, created his own magazine, which he called "Fireside." There were eight issues and each issue contained poems, adventure stories, humor, recipes, and a gossip column. When examined this material displays the talent of this budding poet and critic (Soldo, 1982).

The gift of language is found in all populations and in all cultures. It develops according to a very predictable schedule in infants. For these reasons, the linguistic faculty passes the empirical test to be included in our list of intelligences.

Logical and mathematical abilities, like the linguistic skill, are often associated with the term intelligence; again, many items on tests of intelligence tap these abilities directly. However, the logical-mathematical aptitude must also be included on our list because it passes the empirical test that we have established for multiple intelligences.

The logical-mathematical ability is distinct from the linguistic ability and often the mind solves logical problems without putting them into words. An example comes from the biography of Barbara McClintock, Nobel laureate in genetics. McClintock studied maize and one day her field results, literally taken in a corn field, indicated a pollen sterility different from that predicted by the prevailing theory. McClintock returned to her office and thought about the problem for a while. Suddenly the solution came to her. She ran back to the corn field, announced her solution to her skeptical colleagues, and then sat down in the field and sketched out a proof on a paper bag.

I worked out the solution, step by step, and I came out with [the same result]. [They] looked at the material and it was exactly as I had said it was; it worked out exactly as I had diagrammed it. Now, why did I know, without having done it on paper? Why was I so sure? (Keller, 1982, p. 104)

This story reminds us that the mathematical ability is distinct from the linguistic skill. It also shows the speed with which talented individuals can develop solutions to mathematical problems.

Like linguistic and logical-mathematical abilities, the spatial skill appears on numerous tests of intelligent behavior. The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), for example, includes a subscore that measures spatial abilities through tasks that ask the subject to visualize objects in a rotated configuration.

The spatial intelligence is brought to bear in a variety of activities from solving geometry problems, playing chess, navigating a boat, or reading a map. Evidence from brain research, child development, and anthropological accounts support its inclusion on our list. For example, consider the spatial skills of sailors in the Caroline Islands in the South Seas:

 

 

 

Navigation around the Caroline Islands is accomplished without instruments. The position of the stars, the weather patterns, and water color are the only sign posts. Each journey is broken into a series of segments. During the actual trip the navigator must envision mentally a reference island as it passes under a particular star and from that he computes the number of segments completed, the proportion of the trip remaining, and any corrections in heading that are required. The navigator cannot see the islands as he sails along; instead he maps their locations in his mental “picture” of the journey. (Gardner, 1983)

These various uses of the spatial intelligence remind us that although the intelligences are innate and universal, they appear in very different contexts from one culture to another. Also, spatial intelligence in the blind population underscores the important difference between the intelligence (the spatial ability) and the various modalities of sense data (seeing and touching). A blind person is perfectly competent spatially, creating mental maps of an environment or recognizing objects by touch, without receiving the visual data that are so important to spatial judgments for the seeing person.

The biographies of famous musicians, like those of mathematicians, contain many stories of the early emergence of extraordinary talent at an early age, even before the child has received musical training. For example, at the age of 3, Arthur Rubinstein was taken to the great teacher and violist, Jacob Joachim, because his parents, who themselves lacked musical training, recognized his extraordinary talent. In this interview, young Arthur was asked to call out chords struck on the piano, to play a theme from a Schubert symphony after Joachim had hummed it, and to add the correct harmonies to the phrase and to transpose it. Joachim concluded from this brief interaction: “This boy may become a great musician... he certainly has the talent for it. Let him hear some good singing, but do not force music on him. When the time comes for serious study, bring him to me and I shall be glad to supervise his artistic education.” (Rubinstein, 1978).

 

 Of course, Joachim was correct in his assessment and Rubinstein returned to Berlin to study with Joachim five years later.

Our review of the empirical evidence, including biographies of child prodigies like Rubinstein, studies of brain-damaged adults, reports on idiot savants, cross-cultural accounts, as well as the child development literature, supports the inclusion of musical aptitude on our list of intelligences. Even though it runs counter to our first intuitions of what constitutes “intelligent” behavior, musical aptitude belongs on our list along with linguistic and logical-mathematical aptitude.

In the view of Multiple Intelligences, all seven faculties are equivalent -- some are not more “important” than others. Although twentieth-century western society values the linguistic and logical skills most highly and offers rewards to those who excel in these areas, other cultures value the intelligences differently. We must be careful to distinguish the psychological level, on which the intelligences are equivalent, from the sociological level, on which the intelligences may be differentiated.

Movement of various parts of the body is controlled by the movement cortex regions of the brain, a localized function that is well-documented in the research literature. This control is contra-lateral: the right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for control of movements on the left side of the body and vice versa. Support for the claim that bodily-kinesthetic activities constitute an intelligence is supported by the fact that impairment of voluntary movements through conditions of brain damage can occur while reflexive movements of those same body parts can occur on a non-voluntary basis.

The bodily-kinesthetic intelligence is responsible for such activities as athletics, crafts, and dance. Although the intelligences are independent and distinct, in a task of any complexity, several intelligences are usually deployed in concert. For example, playing the violin, a task that taps the musical intelligence, also requires a sophisticated form of bodily-kinesthetic ability.

Interpersonal intelligence builds on the core ability to notice distinctions among others, in particular contrasts in their intentions, temperaments, moods, and motivations. This skill appears in a highly sophisticated form in religious and political leaders, teachers, and therapists.

The relationship between Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller illustrates the fact that interpersonal intelligence does not depend on language. Anne Sullivan, the “miracle worker,” was herself legally blind and she was not trained in special education. Nevertheless, she successfully faced the daunting challenge of educating a blind and deaf seven-year old, an education that was further complicated by the emotional struggle the child was engaged in as she tried to understand the world around her.

The experiences of Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller underscores the interpersonal understanding that is a necessary part of all teaching. Also, this situation again reminds us of the difference between an intelligence, a cognitive capacity of the brain, and the modes of receiving information, usually the eyes and ears. For Helen Keller the visual and auditory modes were blocked, but she was able to obtain that information through the mode of touch. Although Helen Keller was impaired in some ways, certainly there was nothing wrong with her intellectual capabilities.

This final capacity is responsible for understanding one's own internal aspects -- access to one's feeling life, range of emotions, as well as the capacity to discriminate among these and eventually to label and draw upon them as a means for guiding one's behavior. This intelligence is most private and can only be seen at work when expressed through one of the other intelligences, such as language or music.

At the age of 21, Langston Hughes dropped out of Columbia University and went to sea. The first night out, he threw all of his books into the ocean. One book fell into the scupper -- he climbed down, picked it up and threw it overboard with the others. Why? In his autobiography, Hughes reveals his motivations:

It was like throwing a million bricks out of my heart -- for it wasn't only the books that I wanted to throw away but everything unpleasant and miserable out of my past: the memory of my father, the poverty and uncertainty of my mother's life, the stupidities of color-prejudice, black in a white world, the fear of not finding a job, the bewilderment of no one to talk to about things that trouble you, the feeling of always being controlled by others. All those things I wanted to throw away. To be free of. To escape from. I wanted to be a man on my own, control my own life, and go my own way. I was twenty one. So I threw the books into the sea. (Hughes, 1986, c 1940, p. 99)

This anecdote reveals the intrapersonal intelligence, the individual's self-awareness, as well as the personal courage in creating an unflinching expression of that understanding.

Implications for Education

The theory of Multiple Intelligences has a number of significant implications for education. In this section I will examine two of them: the importance of establishing a rich, meaningful context for problem solving; and the relationship between self-esteem and the full identification an individual's intellectual profile.

The theory of Multiple Intelligences reminds us of the importance of a “hands-on” educational process. In the arts and in the crafts, students learn by doing. To learn to paint, students paint; to learn to operate a table saw, they operate a table saw. In the humanities and in the sciences, in contrast, students learn almost entirely by reading and talking, rather than by doing for themselves. In history class, students read summaries of the work of historians; they don't “do” history. In English class, they read interpretations of novels and analyses of plays; they don't write novels or perform plays. In science class, students review the procedures and findings of pivotal experiments, they don't design and conduct their own experiments.

The theory of Multiple Intelligences suggests that there are a number of shortcomings when education is restricted as it is in the humanities and sciences. The heavily verbal context favors students who excel in the linguistic intelligence while at the same time it does not challenge students to pursue problems using the other intelligences. The exercises, problem sets, and examinations in school are all solved in the same, “school-like” way.

Because the problem-solving context in school is uniquely structured and largely linguistic, students often fail to transfer the problem-solving skills they are developing in school to situations outside school. On the job, for instance, a person is expected to solve a problem using any intelligence that yields a useful solution. By focusing on structured, linguistic solutions to problems, schools do not give students sufficient opportunity to develop the necessarily flexibility in thinking. In this restricted context, schools establish a special context for problem solving that does not reflect problem solving in the world outside school.

Working in this restricted context, students often create a false sense of themselves. Some students, those who are most successful in school because of their linguistic facility, may find themselves with less of an advantage after they leave school. They have come to think of themselves as efficient problem-solvers, and yet when they encounter problems in an unrestricted environment, they struggle to find adequate solutions. Other students, often those who are less successful in school, find that they have very important skills for solving problems in the working world that went unrecognized in school.

Two hypothetical examples illustrate this disparity. First, think of a student who answers correctly and quickly on all school tests, regardless of subject area. This student is also a class leader and involved in many extracurricular activities. However, success in school for this student does not lead to similar success later. Indeed, it is not difficult to imagine this student in a working situation in which he fails to respond with facility, especially when the setting is highly ambiguous and the tasks have no “right answer." The student struggles in this setting, despite his success in school.

 

 

 

Next let's imagine a very different student, someone who is rather ordinary in solving school tasks, but who has the special skill of quick adaptation to new situations. This student also has superior interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences and can efficiently mobilize these capacities in the world outside of school. Forming teams of workers, managing limited resources, and handling ambiguous tasks all come naturally to her. The second student surprises her high school teachers by her success in the work place.

This is not to suggest that no “A” student will succeed in the working world or that no “C” student will struggle. What we find in looking at large numbers of students, however, is that there is surprisingly little correlation between school success and success on the job. The “C” student is just as likely to be successful outside of school as the “A” student. The problem is that in rewarding one type of student and not the other, school raises the self-esteem of the favored group and lowers the self-esteem of the group that it does not favor. School tends to ignore the importance of certain intelligences, and in so doing it discriminates among students.

Multiple intelligences suggests that school need not be structured in this way. For instance, school can help students exercise their interpersonal intelligence by establishing settings for cooperative problem solving. In fact, research indicates that students working in groups actually learn more than individuals working alone. By recognizing students with superior interpersonal, spatial or bodily-kinesthetic skills, school can elevate the self-esteem of those students and provides them with a greater likelihood that they will apply those skills appropriately when they leave school.

The theory of Multiple Intelligences instructs us to look carefully at the context of an activity as we try to understand individual proclivities. This need for rich contexts in problem solving extends to the task of assessing student learning as well. For example, if we want to evaluate an individual's skill in music, we ask that individual to play a piece on a musical instrument. If we want to assess a student's talent as a leader, we might observe that student interacting with her peers.

 

From the performances that result from these situations, we can draw conclusions about what those students have learned about the art form or the social setting and we can generate some ideas about the specific intelligences that have been brought to bear.

In this section, I will examine the assumptions of traditional tests from the perspective of Multiple Intelligences; then I will outline an alternative called performance tests; finally, I will discuss the use of portfolios of student work with a focus on student reflection.

On objective tests, students read a question and identify the correct answer from a list of possible answers. These tests ask the student to exhibit a skill or reveal knowledge in the context of the test, not in the context of solving a problem in the domain. These tests rely heavily on sophisticated linguistic aptitude and performance on them can be seriously reduced for students who do not have this prerequisite linguistic skill. The results are usually reported in terms of the rank of the student within the population taking the test, not in terms of number of questions answered correctly.

These traditional tests alter the relationship of the student and the teacher to assessment. Since they rely on an external measure of competence or skill, these tests become the authority; neither the student nor the teacher has any responsibility for making a judgment of competence. In fact, both student and teacher are discouraged, even disallowed, from making this judgment. Because the results are reported as rankings, students compete; they do not demonstrate competence.

Consequently, tests do two things. First, they establish a very limited context for solving problems, one in which there are no tools, no materials, no collaborators, and a limited amount of time. The context consists entirely of a series of questions followed by correct and incorrect answers. Second, these tests assume all responsibility for measuring the intellectual capabilities of the students taking the test.

One problem with this approach to assessment is that it is entirely unique to the school setting. Once students leave school, they may never again take a multiple-choice test. After they leave school, however, students must learn to do for themselves precisely what the tests have been doing for them previously. Students must figure out what they are learning (or failing to learn). They must draw these judgments from tasks that are heavily dependent on context, in which there are no “right answers.” They must adapt their performance based on these judgments. Furthermore, they do not have tests (or teachers) to help them make these judgments.

The theory of Multiple Intelligences reminds us why these two issues of assessment -- context and responsibility for assessment -- are important. Context reveals the intelligences, at work. Responsibility for assessment exercises the intrapersonal intelligence in a way that makes the students independent learners and successful problem solvers after they leave the very special environment of the school.

Building on this view of assessment derived from the theory of Multiple Intelligences, researchers, including those at Project Zero, are exploring assessment techniques that are built around authentic performances. In music, for example, a teacher evaluates a student's facility with a given piece by asking the student to perform that piece -- the performance itself is the “test.” The assessment is “authentic” because performance on the test draws directly on the skills that the student is trying to master. The student practices the performance piece repeatedly, taking the “test” until she has mastered it.

The performances that are selected for assessment must reflect the actual skills and competencies that are valued in the field. For example, authentic skills in chemistry class might include designing an experiment around a question, gathering evidence, analyzing the resulting data, and reporting the results in a coherent and convincing manner.

 

 

An authentic task in social studies might include conducting original research, reviewing relevant information in the library, and creating a video documentary that represents the results. In each case, students would practice these skills repeatedly until they have mastered them.

One example of a performance task in high school chemistry, developed by Dale Wolfgram and Compton Mahase for the Connecticut State Department of Education, poses this problem to students:

You will be given two samples of soda; one regular soda containing sugar and one diet soda containing an artificial sweetener. Your task is to identify each sample as diet or regular. You must base this decision on the physical or chemical properties of the two different types of soda. As in any chemistry experiment, you are not allowed to taste any of the samples. Come up with a list of at least three possible ways to identify the samples and explain why you chose them.

Students start the task alone. Then they work in small groups for brainstorming and experimenting. Finally, students finish the task alone, answering a similar question concerning salt and fresh water.

As teachers evaluate student work on the Soda Task, they consider whether students can identify the appropriate properties of the liquids for the purposes of identification; can identify the information and steps needed to solve the problem; and can communicate those strategies through written means. (Baron, 1991)

Taking the notion of performance assessment one step further, the evaluation of these performances and their artifacts can be extended by collecting them in portfolios. As students work through a number of performances, they collect the results in a folder. Later, they select from these artifacts a specific collection that “tells the story” of what that they have learned and the skills that they have mastered. This collection, along with a description of what has been selected and why, comprises the portfolio.

The portfolio collection should not be restricted simply to the student's best work. It should also include drafts, outlines, and early attempts, since these are equally important to the task of demonstrating what the student has learned and the specific skills and concepts mastered. Also, as the student looks back over the folder of work, selecting pieces for the portfolio, these interim pieces are an important element that fill in the “biography” of the process that the student went through.

A number of important things can happen with this portfolio collection. First, the portfolio captures the student's work over the entire course of the year. As an assessment it reaches well beyond the "snapshot" examination that captures only the student's knowledge and capabilities at a specific moment. The portfolio can encourage students to take risks, to explore novel solutions to familiar problems, and to attempt more difficult strategies that may require longer periods of time. The portfolio can also reveal patterns in students' growth and learning.

Second, the portfolios can link the students' work in school to the culture that surrounds the school. For example, if students are working in the community, they can use their portfolios to connect those efforts with their school work. For example, a high school Student who is doing volunteer work in a hospital might use her portfolio to make connections between that volunteer work and her biology course. Without the portfolio, the two experiences may be disconnected; but by looking for points of contact over the course of the year and by documenting those connections in her portfolio, the student can demonstrate her learning about biology in an applied setting that is meaningful to her personally.

Finally, the portfolios encourage students to take ownership for their work and to reflect on their progress. Rather than simply hurdling a series of obstacles, students become increasingly responsible for establishing personal goals and then for demonstrating that they have reached those goals through a collection of work. To bring about this sense of ownership, students must consistently work with their portfolios, reviewing the materials that they contain, making selections for inclusion or exclusion, and analyzing and discussing their choices.

 

 

Students should also take every opportunity to share their portfolios with peers, parents, teachers, and other interested adults. In short, the process of reflection and sharing amplifies the central importance of each student's portfolio and the work it contains.

Student reflection is a meaningful ingredient in a portfolio not only because it fosters a sense of ownership, but also because it is instructive at the same time. Far more important than the specific facts and skills that students learn in school are the insights they develop into the learning process itself. Students must learn how to teach themselves new skills and ideas, because once they leave school, they will no longer have the guidance of teachers and tests. Formal schooling can foster this ability by having students pay careful attention to their individual learning styles, by having them make important choices about their learning while they are in school, and by having them create portfolios that document those experiences.

Of course, the portfolio approach with its reflective component will not be effective immediately and automatically. Students must learn how to create portfolios and how to think about themselves as learners. The portfolio must become part of the educational experience of the classroom and part of the regular conversation between the teacher and the student as well as among the students themselves. When this happens, the focus of the classroom changes and the relative roles of the students and the teacher begin to change as well.

The move from the theory of Multiple Intelligences to performance assessments is straightforward. In order to analyze an intelligence, we must find problems that put it to work. We cannot learn about an individual's interpersonal intelligence or about his musical intelligence by asking him questions. We must pose for that person an interpersonal problem or a musical challenge. If we simply ask questions, we are evaluating the linguistic (and perhaps the logical-mathematical) intelligence instead.

Furthermore, if we want our schools to prepare students for the challenges they will face after they leave, we must constantly pose challenges in school that force them to invoke a variety of intelligences.

 

These challenges should have different kinds of solutions, they should involve a variety of intelligences, they should encourage collaboration, and they should provide opportunities for reflection. In other words, to make our assessments more compatible with Multiple Intelligences, we must make them more authentic and more oriented toward performance.

At the same time, we want to foster the intrapersonal intelligence as well. To do so, we must pose problems and situations for students that evoke performances, and then encapsulate the resulting work in portfolios and help the students reflect on that work. If students leave school with plenty of practice self-consciously solving many types of problems, they will be better equipped to solve novel problems in the working world by drawing on a more complete understanding of themselves and their strengths and weaknesses.

Implications of the Theory of
Multiple Intelligences for Multicultural Education

Finally, we turn to the implications of this theory of for multicultural education. I raise two questions in this regard. First, do different cultural or ethnic groups manifest different intellectual endowments? Second, what does our analysis of school from the standpoint of Multiple Intelligences suggest for the bilingual student?

The question of whether intellectual endowment varies from one ethnic group to another is a particularly difficult one because it leads quickly to issues of bias. For example, I am occasionally asked if particular ethnic groups are more skilled in certain intelligences than others. One group might be especially musical and kinesthetic; another group might have special spatial skills; still another excels in the verbal realm. This brings quickly to mind the racial and ethnic stereotypes of the African-American athlete, the Irish politician, and the Korean science fair winner. My answer can be simply stated: there is no evidence to support intellectual differentiations based on racial or ethnic origins.

There is, of course, important variation in intellectual competence among individuals, both in the computational ability of each intelligence and in the combination of intelligences in the intellectual profile.

 

 However, membership in a particular ethnic group does not predict any of this individual variation. In any classroom, students will reflect a variety of intellectual profiles -- some students will be especially verbal, some interpersonal, some spatial, and so on. This intellectual variety appears in all classrooms; it does not matter if the students are all from the same racial or ethnic group or if they represent different groups.

Although the individuals vary, the various racial and ethnic groups have the same innate intellectual endowment that they manifest in different ways. For example, given the same linguistic intelligence, some groups rely heavily on written language, others favor an oral tradition and still others communicate through linguistic codes.

The fact that schooling relies heavily on particular forms of linguistic communication and administers examinations that are heavily dependent on a particular form of linguistic skill puts students from a different linguistic heritage at a disadvantage. Furthermore, this singular approach to language can establish a disjunction between the culture of schooling and culture of the community. The theory of Multiple Intelligences reminds us that this disjunction, which may make school irrelevant and alienating to students from a different linguistic tradition, is a feature of cultures and not of intelligences (Banks, 1988, 1989).

A similar disjunction between the manifestation of the intelligence in school and its manifestation in the community can occur for each of the other intelligences as well. For instance, studies in school tap the spatial intelligence in geometry and geography; the culture of the community, on the other hand, may value graphic design or chess playing. School places little value on interpersonal skills, while the community may value those skills highly.

In sum, there are important differences in how students from different cultural groups deploy the various intelligences and how the intelligences are valued by those cultural groups. One strategy for coping with these differences might be for school to reduce the distinctions between the use of intelligences in school and in the community; a second strategy is for school to find ways of demonstrating a respect for those differences and celebrating the individual competencies in students even when those competencies are different from the basic expectations of school.

As for the bilingual student, it should be clear by now that the highly linguistic environment of school, with its focus on written language, places at a disadvantage any student with difficulties in the linguistic realm. The ability to learn and the ability to display that learning are both impaired in the bilingual student in this highly verbal setting.

Perhaps the most important implication for bilingual education from the theory of Multiple Intelligences is the importance of separating the intellectual capacity from the skill with using the language of the dominant culture. Just as school often fails to recognize the abilities of students who are successful in the world after leaving school, it also fails to recognize the abilities of students who have not mastered the language of school.

One remedy for this situation is to provide more situations in which students can display competencies that do not rely as heavily on specific linguistic skills. Projects, in both the arts and in the crafts, can be an excellent indicator of these capabilities. Working cooperatively in groups is a second. Display of diligence or creativity over a period of time is a third. If we can build this variety into the school setting, we can more accurately identify students with talents and students with difficulties, apart from their mastery of language. We can make our schools more reflective of and better preparation for the world outside school. And we can give our students a more complete sense of themselves.

In summary, if we are to take Multiple Intelligences (and multiple cultures) seriously, then school must establish a meaningful context for problem solving; it must provide an opportunity for students to practice using a variety of intelligences; it must build self-esteem by helping students develop an accurate and complete picture of their capabilities; and it must establish assessment situations that facilitate and reinforce these ideas.

Schools that Provide Opportunities for Success

To a large extent school is a mechanism for transmitting the expectations of society and for sorting the members of that society. Because that transmission is based on language, the sorting is also based on language.

 

 The theory of Multiple Intelligences predicts that such an environment will place many individuals at a disadvantage and will unfortunately yield the view that not every student can learn. Indeed, with its focus on linguistic skill of a particular sort, traditional schooling consistently underestimates the capabilities of many very talented bilingual students. Indeed, this misrepresentation occurs for any student whose particular blend of intelligences does not match precisely what the traditional school requires.

There is an alternative. We might begin to think of school as a place where students pursue the successful accomplishment of meaningful activities rather than the locus of sorting and the gatekeeper to future opportunities. Schools for success must provide a variety of opportunities for students by considering the different intellectual proclivities and cultural predispositions that students bring to school.

Such a view takes seriously the notion that every student can learn; but it does not require that all students learn in the same way. Just as the musician and the backgammon player solve different problems and use different intelligences, they can both be remarkably successful at what they were doing but in very different ways.

Introducing multiplicity to this analysis and emphasizing success does not imply that school must lower its standards, that “anything goes.” Quite the opposite is the case. Successful accomplishment requires genuine challenge, high standards, and definitions of accomplishment that are acknowledged publicly. Furthermore, we can bring demanding techniques of evaluation to these disparate activities via the assessment alternatives of performances, projects and portfolios. Using these techniques, the schools for success can document and evaluate a variety of performances while maintaining very high standards.

A school that evaluates on a normal curve is not a school in which all students can be successful, because only half of its students can be above average. In contrast, a school that respects and responds to the multiplicity of aptitudes, that builds on its students' bilingual backgrounds, and that allows for variety in student performance, can strive for success for all.

 

REFERENCES

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Baron, J. (1991, July). Performance assessment in mathematics and science: Scoring performance assessments. Paper presented at the Institute on Diversified Approaches to Assessment, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind. New York: Basic Books.

Hughes, L. (1986). The big sea: an autobiography. London: Pluto.

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Rubinstein, A. (1978). My young years. New York: Alfred A. Knopf

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