sábado, 22 de noviembre de 2014
Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles.
This cartoon has been appearing on our Facebook feeds lately, bringing the problematic in today's education under the light spot, criticizing the obvious problem behind evaluations: "For a fair selection everybody has to take the same exam: Please climb that tree".
As educators we all have been learners as well. Who
hasn’t come out of a classroom feeling lost and doubtful, blaming the lack of
understanding on ourselves and on a false sense of incapacity to learn? We
usually blamed the subject and ended up having a bad attitude towards it,
saying I’m not good with numbers, “Yo soy más de letras”, etc. But how many
times do we stop to think about our own students learning styles on a daily
basis? Having to teach a class of 20 or 30 students, doesn't always leave
time to offer them our personal tutoring, although we’d like to do so.
The theory of Multiple Intelligences was first released to the public in 1983 by Harvard's phycologist Howard Gardner, in which he states that the traditional view of a singular intelligence is too narrow and rigid, and therefore he suggests that people have eight different intelligences, and that we can indeed have ones more developed than others.
They consist on: Musical and harmonic, visual-spatial, verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalistic.
In this article from the blog About Education, phycology expert Kendra Cherry, briefly explains the different intelligences, using images and providing examples of possible career choices. From: http://psychology.about.com/od/educationalpsychology/ss/multiple-intell_2.htm#step-heading
Knowing our students' different learning styles allows us
to approach the class in a way that we can reach all of them, making the best
of our own style and therefore avoiding handicaps in the exchange of content
and knowledge. In order to apply this in our everyday, we must
reflect it in our lesson plans, which should be a structured and logical
sequence of activities, which would involve visual resources such as photos,
videos, drawings, etc.; musical resources such as songs or rhymes and
kinesthetic experiences such as games, experiments, projects, etc. It will also
affect the way we behave in class, acknowledging our instructions that might be
given in oral and written forms as well as a previous DEMO done by the teacher. By doing this, we will not only make sure that all
students receive the information in one way or another, but we will also ensure
that the gained knowledge lasts.
When it comes to the students' performances in
class, then we must always consider their own abilities and intelligences,
taking into account that a student might shine in more than one intelligence
(Logical, Verbal and Kinesthetic for example) and therefore he/she will be able
to understand and communicate better trough an activity conceived for that
purpose. So it happens in the opposite way, when we find ourselves struggling
with a S that clearly doesn’t understand the purpose of the activity,
instructions, etc. It is then when the
teacher must have established a good rapport with his/hers students to be able to
respond quickly and accurately to the situation, providing an alternative that
will fit the students in need.
A good teacher will use this information
(obtained within time or by a simple set of tests done at the beginning of the
year) to respond to the group’s needs and eventually relate to all of the
individuals composing it. It will definitely change our perspective on each and
every kid, especially when it comes to those with special needs. It sure has
helped me when I’ve stumbled upon fantastic and unique characters in my career.
Educator Ken Robinson exposes the reality of today's schools system, by stating how unaware education is of multiple intelligences in our students and therefore, end up "killing their creativity". He speaks in an approachable and refreshing way, calling for our own reflexions on the matter.
Here's an activity I've found in the collaborative website: Teachers Pay Teachers, in which primary teacher Stephany Stwart has created a fantastic Back To School Unit for teachers and kids to research and find out which are the different intelligences and with which one they identify the most. Enjoy!
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