Understanding a child's learning process

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Multiple intelligences
In the '90s, many educators incorporated Howard Gardner's observations about multiple intelligences. Gardner is a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education and the author of Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (Basic Books, 10th anniversary edition, 1993). Gardner describes a set of definable areas of intelligence that are common to all human beings, but which exist in different strengths in each person. However, our society in general and our education system in particular have valued most highly the intelligences that demonstrate linguistic, logical-mathematicaI and spatial abilities. But, as Gardner points out, we all respond in different ways to information presented by different means -- in written language, in oral tales or in music, for example. The most effective way of accommodating these different intelligences is to gear teaching to the different learning styles of the individual kids in a group. A kid who is good at spatial representation and who can draw an understandable map for a treasure hunt should have that skill recognized just as readily as the kid who writes out -- with perfect spelling, usage and grammar -- the instructions for other students to hunt the treasure.

The eight intelligences
Linguistic intelligence
The capacity to use language to express and understand.

Logical-mathematical intelligence
The capacity to understand underlying principles as a scientist would, or to manipulate numbers and operations and test possible solutions to problems the way a mathematician does.

Spatial intelligence
The ability to represent the spatial world internally in your mind, like a navigator or pilot, a chess player or sculptor.

Bodily kinesthetic intelligence
The ability to use the body, in whole or part, to solve problems or to create.

Musical intelligence
The ability to think in music: to hear, recognize, remember and manipulate musical patterns.

Interpersonal intelligence
The ability to empathize with and understand other people.

Intrapersonal intelligence
The understanding of self, of who you are, your own strengths and limitations.

Naturalist intelligence
The ability to discriminate between and classify objects in nature and living things.

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