-- MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES DEFINED --

The following material is provided courtesy of Dr. James C. Shuman, chairman of the education department of St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, and president of the board of trustees of Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History.

• Howard Gardner is a Professor of Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education, a psychological researcher, and an author of several books on learning theory and intelligence. In Frames of Mind (1985), Gardner first introduced the theory of multiple intelligences in the psyche, and in The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach (1991), he suggested how schools could put the theory into practice. Since the publication of these books, schools throughout America and around the world have begun to act on Gardner's suggestions to change curriculum accordingly.
• In 1985 in Frames of Mind, Gardner introduced seven different intelligences that all humans appear to possess in some degree. By the mid-1990's, he had added an eighth. Gardner argues that while each of the eight intelligences exists in every person, some are usually not fully developed. He contends that school curricula traditionally favor only a few of the eight intelligences, and that schools could do a better job (and a greater percentage of students could experience success) by building the curriculum to cater to, and develop, all eight intelligences.

INTERPERSONAL: The capacity to understand other people and how they think, feel, and/or act. Activities and demonstrations involving interpersonal intelligence could include work in human dynamics, politics, group projects, and the like.

INTRAPERSONAL: The capacity to understand one's own self, one,s interests, abilities, interests, likes and dislikes, and interactions. Activities and demonstrations involving intrapersonal intelligence could include reaction papers, personal viewpoints, career explorations, and the like.

BODILY-KINESTHETIC: The capacity to use one,s own whole body or parts of it (hands, fingers, arms, etc.) to solve problems, make things, or put on some kind of production. Activities and demonstrations involving bodily-kinesthetic intelligence could include physical activities and games, interpretive dance, and the like.

LINGUISTIC: The capacity to express one,s self in native or non-native languages and to understand how others communicate using language. Activities and demonstrations involving linguistic intelligence could include writing reports, essays or poetry, giving speeches and presentations, or demonstrating listening skills.

LOGICAL-MATHEMATICAL: The capacity to understand underlying principles of different kinds of causal systems, and the capacity to manipulate quantities and operations to describe aspects of the system. Activities and demonstrations involving logical-mathematical intelligence could include designing scientific experiments, gathering and analyzing data, identifying theoretical concepts and their applications, and the like.

MUSICAL: The capacity to think musically, to hear patterns, recognize them, and manipulate them. Activities and demonstrations involving musical intelligence could include writing and/or performing music or songs, contributing to musical productions, analyzing musical compositions and performances, and the like. NOTE: People do not necessarily need to have musical "talent" to possess or demonstrate musical intelligence; many individuals are deeply affected by music's patterns and understand them, even though the same people cannot always create or reproduce them fully.

NATURALISTIC: The capacity to discriminate among living organisms as well as understand relationships among living and non-living features of the natural world. The ability to discriminate has been a necessary human capacity throughout the evolutionary past and plays a fundamental role for individuals as diverse as botanists and chefs. Activities and demonstrations involving naturalistic intelligence could include field trips and explorations, laboratory investigations, and even cooking. NOTE: This type of intelligence was added to Howard Gardner's original list of seven intelligences that he first described in Frames of Mind (1985).

SPATIAL: The capacity to represent the spatial world in the mind and operate on it successfully, whether it might be, for example, as a navigator, a sculptor, or a chess player. Activities and demonstrations involving spatial intelligence could include art projects, construction work, development of maps or other spatial representations, and the like.

The preceding material was paraphrased by Dr. Shuman from Kathy Checkley's lead article, "The First Seven and the Eighth," in Educational Leadership, v. 55, n. 1, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), Alexandria, VA, , Sept., 1997. This issue focused on Gardner's theory and its applications in schools.

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