Multiple Intelligence Theory and its effect on Teacher-Student

Teaching may be one of the most difficult professions to perfect because despite having to share your knowledge with your students and above all teaching them , one of the hardest duties a teacher has to perform is to deal with the human mind of all of his/her students. Not every students’ brain  receives information in the same way as other students’ brain does , and this somehow hinders more the job of a teacher.

So , the teacher has to know or at least , to study the different kind of intelligences through which the human brain works , processes information, decodes and is responsible for other processes also.

The information that I previously had about Multiple Intelligences were just basic information about how different intelligences guide our processing and our preferences into being proficient in a dimension and not in others, but compared to the novelties to which we were introduced during the lecture, are little.  I used to think that we can be proficient in only one of the intelligences, but after the discussion that we conducted in class , I realized that the process of learning is actually biological ,though we always used to think that this process was psychological , and in fact it really was like this because we used to convince our brain that we are good only at one intelligence and made it a priority for our future studies.

Multiple Intelligence Theory is a theory proposed by Gardner with eight Multiple Intelligences :

• ·         Musical- rhythmic
• ·         Visual –spatial
• ·         Verbal- linguistic
• ·         Logical –mathematical
• ·         Bodily-kinesthetic
• ·         Interpersonal
• ·         Intrapersonal
• ·         Naturalistic

Applying the MI Theory in a classroom by the teacher has clear benefits , most of them educational , which is also my target for this post.  First of all, what gives a unique importance to this Theory into being used in a classroom is the fact that it can be used at any level and for every subject. But who is this realized in a classroom environment ? What I can say about this is that any student who comes to a classroom comes only as an individual who has developed only a different type of intelligence , thus he/she also has this “Superiority” in the intelligence he/she has developed but we cannot leave behind the fact that being proficient for this student in a different type of intelligence means also that he/she shares some weaknesses regarding his developed intelligence .

This also shows that taking into consideration the different intelligences that every student possesses , I can say that this also determines the difficulty or the ease at that each student may encounter into learning in different teaching methods.

Secondly , in the same way that there may be different intelligences present in a classroom , there can also be different learning styles. In this case the teacher should find the balance between the learning styles and subject matter . In order to fight this peculiarity that is present in every classroom, the teacher should make clear for students how to understand a subject which actually addresses their weakness parts in their prior intelligence   by giving priority to their superior intelligence domain , so finding the balance between them.  An example to demonstrate this kind of balance that the teacher has to achieve so that the learning domain is clear to his/her students is : A student has highly – developed musical intelligence and is asked to learn some theories in mathematics  and he can be advised to learn the theories in mathematics by singing them.

Thirdly , students who rely heavily on their superior intelligence in learning  are able to learn subjects which are out of their goals with joy and above all, without pressure. An example of this can be the following : For many students , chemistry is considered a tough subject , because it deals with lots of formula , concepts and experiments but it can be learnt properly if explained through learning activities that implements students’ intelligences. This is possible because in this way  , students will find it more interesting and will evaluate this as a funny way of learning , taking into consideration the fact that chemistry can also be learnt  by dancing , singing , what teachers need is only a mix of activities for any kind of MI that students may have developed earlier.

In this way , students themselves will discover the best ways by which  they are able to perceive information in different intelligences.

Though difficult as it may seem the correct adaption of this theory in a classroom, the impossible is far from this , because what it takes in this case , is just for a teacher to find the balance of the activites she plans on using every week and also the most important , to find the balance between the students’ different intelligences and to advocate the development of other intelligences too.

“When Einstein had thought through a problem, he always found it necessary to formulate this subject in as many different ways as possible and to present it so that it would be comprehensible to people accustomed to different modes of thought and with different educational preparations

Howard Gardner.

      Einstein was Smart . Let's do as Einstein did .

      

      Hope you enjoyed my post ! 

      Thank you !