E ducation poiicymakerssometimes go astray whenthey attempt to integratemultiple intelligences theoryinto schools. They mistak-enly believe that teachers must groupstudents for instruction according toeight or nine different intelligencescores. Or they grapple with theunwieldy notion of requning teachers toprepare eight or nine separate entrypoints for every lesson.

Multiple intelligences theory wasoriginally developed as an explanationof how the mind worksnot as aneducation policy, let alone an educationpanacea. Moreover, when we and othercolleagues began to consider the impli-cations of the theory for education, thelast thing we wanted to do was multiplyeducators' jobs ninefold. Rather, wesought to demonstrate that becausestudents bring to the classroom diverseintellectual profiles, one "IQ" measure isinsufficient to evaluate, label, and planeducation programs for all students.

Adopting a multiple intelligencesapproach can bring about a quiet revo-lution in tbe way students see [hem-selves and others. Instead of definingthemselves as either "smart" or "dumb,"students can perceive themselves aspotentially smart in a number of ways.

Profile Students,Don't Score ThemMultiple intelligences theory proposesthat It IS more fruitful to describe anindmduals cognitive ability in terms ofseveral relatively independent but inter-acting cognitive capacities rather than mterms of a single "general" intelligence.Think of LEGO building blocks. If webave only one kind of block to playwith, we can build only a limited rangeof structures, ifwe have a number ofdifferent block shapes that can mtercon-nect lo create a variety of patterns andStructures, we can accomplish more

nuanced and complex designs. Theeight or nine intelligences work tbesame way

Tbe greatest potential of a multipleintelligences approach to educationgrows from the concept of a profile ofintelligences, Each learner's intelligenceprofile consists of a combination of rela-tive strengths and weaknesses amongthe different intelligences: linguistic,logical-mathematical, musical, spatial.

strengths through advanced opportuni-ties to develop their gifts or to bolstertheir weak areas through remediation sothat they can pass the tests. Policy andfunding currently favor the secondoption unless the student is gifted in thetraditional academic areas.

Other students have a searchlightprofile; Tbey show less pronounceddifferences among intelligences. Thechallenge with searchlight-profile

bodily-kinesthetic, naturalistic, interper-sonal, intrapersonal, and (at least provi-sionally") existential (Gardner, 2006),

Most people have jagged profiles;they process some tyi^ es of informationbetter than other ty^es. Students whoexhibit vast vanation among their intel-ligenceswith one or two intelligencesvery strong and the others relativelyweakhave what we call a laser profile.These students often have a strong areaof interest and can follow a clear path tosuccess by developing their peak intelli-gences. Given the ubiquity of high-stakes testing, educators' challenge withlaser-profile students is decidingwhether to accentuate the students'

students is to help them choose a careerand life path. Time and resource limita-tions often preclude developing allintelligences equally, so we need toconsider which intelligences are mostlikely to pay off for a particular student.Policy and funding currently favordeveloping primarily linguistic andlogical-mathematical intelligences at theexpense of tbe others.

Intelligences are not isolated: theycan interact witb one another in anindividual to yield a variety ofoutcomes. For example, a successfuldancer must combine musical, spatial,and bodily-kinesthetic intelligences; ascience fiction novelist must use logical-

' ^ ' .Of l A T I O N FOR S U P F R V I S I O N A N D C U R R I C LI L L^ M D E V E L O P M E N T 2 3

mathematical, linguistic, inter-personal, and some existentialintelligences; an effective triallawyer must combine linguisticand interpersonal intelligences;a skillful waiter uses linguistic,spatial, interpersonal, andbodtly-kinesthetic intelligences;and a marine biologist needsstrong naturalistic and logical-mathematical intelligences. Inthe education setting, thedifferent intelligences canmteract in two ways: within thestudent and across students.

An Internal OrchestraJust as the sounds o! string,woodwind, and percussioninstruments combine to create asymphony, the different intelli-gences intermix within a studentto yield meaningful scholasticachievement or other accom-plishments. And as in anorchestra, one intelligence(instrument) in an individual can inter-fere v/ith other5, compensate for others,or enhance others.

Intciference. Intelligences may notalways work in harmony; sometimesthey create discord. For example, even astudent who has good social skills(strong interpersonal intelligence), mayhave trouble making friends if shecannot talk witb others easily becauseshe has weak linguistic intelligence.Another student who loves to read andreceives frequent praise in English classmay sit in the back row and bury herhead in a novel during math class,where she feels less confident. Thus, herlinguistic strength is a bottleneck for thedevelopment of her logical-mathemat-ical intelligence. A tbird students weak-ness in intrapersonal intelligence, whichmakes it difficult for him to regulate hismoods or thoughts, may prevent himfrom completing his math homeworkconsistently and thus mask his stronglogical-mathematical intelligence.

Compensation. Sometimes one intelli-gence compensates for another. Astudent may give great class presenta-

tions because he can effectively use hisbody posture and gestures even thoughhis sentence structure is somewhatconvoluted. That is, bis bodily-kinestheticintelligence compensates for bislinguistic limitations. (We can think ofmore than one U.S. president who fitsthis profile.) Or a student may eam ahigh mark on a paper for writing with apowerful rhetorical voice, even thoughher argument is not quite solid: Herlinguistic intelligence compensates forher logical-mathematical limitations.

Enhancement. Finally, one intelligencemay jump-start another. Strong spatialintelligence may improve a studentsability to conceptualize a mathematicalconcept or problem. This was certainlythe case v^ dth Einstein. Strong musicalintelligence may stimulate interest andplayfulness in writing poetry. Under-standing how intelligences can catalyzeone another may help studentsandteachersmake decisions about how todeploy the intellectual resources theyhave at their disposal,

Tbe profile approach to multipleintelligences instruction provides

teachers with better diagnosticinformation to help a particularstudent who is struggling. Beforeproviding assistance, we need toask why the student is havingdifficulty For example, considerthree beginning readers whohave trouble comprehending astory. The first is strugglingbecause of poor reading compre-hension skills {a linguistic intelli-gence challenge). The second haspoor social understanding of thedynamics among the story's char-acters (an interpersonal intelli-gence challenge). Tbe tbird bassuch strong spatial intelligencethat he has trouble seeingbeyond ihe physical pattern ofthe letter symbols (a cballengethat Picasso, for example, facedin bis early years). More readingpractice, which is often thedefault intervention, may notbelp all of these students.

A student's potential is not thesum of his or her intelligence "scores,"as some multiple intelligence inventorymeasures on the market imply If oneintelligence is a bottleneck for otbers,then the student's overall potential maybe lower than the straight sum. If intelli-gences are compensating for orenhancing one another, the student'soverall potential may he higher than thestraight sum. Intelligences have multi-plicative as well as additive effects.

An Effective Ensembleintelligences can also work acrossstudents. The information explosion hasgreatly escalated the amount of informa-tion that each person must assimilateand understandfrequently beyondwhat we can handle by ourselves. Workteams, institutional partnerships, andinterdisciplinary projects have increas-ingly become the norm. These ensem-bles support individuals as they seek tolearn, understand, and perform well.

Multiple intelligences theory encour-ages collaboration across students.Students with compatible profiles{exhibiting tbe same patterns of

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cognitive and personality development,Ifwe give all students the same material,each student will have a different expe-rience according to his or her back-ground, strengths, and challenges.Thus, to promote learning acrossstudent intelligence profiles, teachersneed to offer students rich experi-encesacti\'ities in which they canengage with the material personallyrather than just absorb it in an abstract,decontextualized way.

Rich experiences enable students toleam along several dimensions atoncesocially spatially, kinestheticaliyself-reflectively and so on. Often, theseexperiences cross subject-area lines.At Searsport Elementary School inSearsport, Maine, a 5th grade teacherwho had strong storytelling abilities andan avid interest in history joined forceswith her colleague, an expert in hands-on science, to develop an archaeologyunit. Students studied history and geog-

\

strengths and weaknesses) can worktogether to solidify and build onstrengths. For example, two studentshighly capable in storytelling cansuppon each other by moving beyondthe basics of plot to explore anddevelop twists in the narrative, A groupof students who are skilled in numericalcompulation might extend a statisticslesson beyond mean, median, mode,and range to understand correlation orregression.

Students with complementaryprofiles (in which one students weakareas are another student's strengths)can work together to compensate forone another. Such students canapproach material in different butequally valid ways. For example, astudent who is strong in logical-mathematical intelligence and sufficientin spatial intelligence might be able totranslate abstract math problems intodance choreography or sculpturecontexts to make them understandableto a student with strong spatial andbodily-kinesthetic intelligences-Provide Rich ExperiencesThe eminent psychologist L. S.Vygotsky (1978) emphasized that expe-riencethe idiosyncratic way each indi-vidual internalizes the environment'sinformationis important m both

Gardner's Multiple IntelligencesLinguistic. Ability to understand and use spoken and writtencommunication. Ideal vocation: poet*

Logical-mathematical. Ability to understand and use logic andnumerical symbols and operations. Ideal vocation: computerprogrammer.

Musical, Ability to understand and use such concepts as rhythm,pitch, melody, and harmony. Ideal vocation: composer.

Spatial. Ability to orient and manipulate three-dimensionalspace. Ideal vocation: architect.

Bodily-kinesthetic. Ability to coordinate physical movement.Ideal vocation: athlete.

Naturalistic. Ability to distinguish and categorize objects orphenomena in nature. Ideal vocation: zoologist.

Interpersonal. Ability to understand and interact well with otherpeople. Ideal vocation: politician; salesperson.

Intrapersonal. Ability to understand and use one's thoughts,feelings, preferences, and interests. Ideal vocation: autobiogra-pher; entrepreneur. (Although high intrapersonal intelligenceshould help in almost any job because of its role in self-regulation, few paid positions reward a person solely forknowing himself or herself well.)Existential. Ability to contemplate phenomena or questionsbeyond sensory data, such as the infinite and infinitesimal.Ideal vocation: cosmologist; philosopher.*Most vocations involve several intelligences.

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raphy as well as scientific method andarchaeology techniques. They investi-gated local history, conducted a state-approved archaeological dig, identifiedand classified objects, and displayed tbeartifacts in a museum exhibit thatmet real-world curatorial standards(Komhaber, Fierros, & Veenema, 2004).

Rich experiences also provide diag-nostic infonnation. Teachers canobserve student performances to fmdroot causes of misunderstandings and tofigure out how students can achievesuperior understandings. One smallgroup of 2nd and 3rd graders inChimene Brandts class at Pittsburgh'sMcCIear)- Elementary School produceda mural depicting a rainy street scene.Their spatial portrayal of material wasambiguous: The connection to the unit'stopic of rivers and the lesson's topic ofthe water cycle laws was not obvious.The students' understanding camethrough linguistically, however, whenthey presented in class how the waterfrom the street would evaporate,condense into clouds, and againproduce rain. By giving the studentsmultiple ways to express the concepts,Brandt was able to confirm that thestudents understood the material eventhough their linguistic skills outstrippedtbeir spatial skills (Komhaber, Fierros,& Veenema, 2004).

Two programs exemplify how richexperiences can serve as venues fordeveloping and assessing multiple intel-ligences. The first, Project Spectrum, isan interactive assessment process forpreschool children developed in the1980s at Harvard Project Zero (Gardner,Feldman, & Krechevsky, 1998), Thisprocess evaluates eacb intelligencedirectly, rather than funneling the infor-mation through a linguistic paper-and-pencil test. Spatial orientation andmanipulation tasks evaluate spatialintelligence; group tasks evaluate inter-personal intelligence; self-assessmentspaired with the other assessments eval-uate intrapersonal intelligence. ProjectSpectrum environments do not segmenttasks strictly into one intelligence oranother. Instead, they set up situationsin which a student can interact witbrich matenalsand teachers canobserve these interactionsto seewhich intelligences come to tbe fore andwhich are relegated to the background,

A naturalist's comer provides biolog-ical specimens for students to touch andmove (using bodily-kinesthetic intelli-gence), arrange (naturalistic), createrelationships among (logical-mathemat-ical), tell stories about (linguistic), oreven compare themselves witb (intra-personal). In a storytelling area,students cati tell tales (linguistic),

arrange props and character figurines(spatial and possibly bodily-kines-tbetic), make characters interact (inter-personal), and design tbeir own story-boards (spatial). Fifteen other activitiesprovide opportunities for evaluatingintelligences through reliable scoringmbrics that have been used widely inearly childhood education in tbe UnitedStates, Latin Amenca, Europe, and Asia(Gardner, Feldman. & Krechevsky,,1998),

Another environment providing richexperiences using a multiple intelli-gences approach is the Explorama atDanfoss Universe, a science park inNordborg, Denmark (see v/ww,danfossuniverse.com). Designed according tomultiple intelligences theory, this inter-active museum is used by people of allagesfrom school groups to corporateteams. The designers have devised sepa-rate exhibits, games, and challenges foreach intelligence and for numerouscombinations of intelligences. Oneexperience asks participants to balancethemselves (bodily-kinesthetic); anotherasks them to balance in a group (bodily-kinesthetic and interpersonal), Acomputer program encourages partici-pants to add, subtract, or combinedifferent musical qualities and see onscreen how the tone frequencies change,tapping into musical, spatial, andlogical-mathematical intelligences.

Three activities deserve particularattention for their innovativeness massessing several intelligences concur-rendy and in emphasizing intelligencesthat are often neglected in mainstreamacademic testing. One game involvesmanipulating a joystick to control arobot tbat can lift and move a cube to atarget space. When played alone, thisexhibit primarily assesses bodily-kinesthetic and spatial intelligence. Butwhen two to four people each control adilferent joystickone that controls theleft wheel ofthe robot, another thatcontrols the right wheel, another thatraises the cube, and another that lowersthe cubethey must coordinate theirplay to accomplish the task, employinglinguistic, logical-mathematical, and

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interpersonal intelligences.Another game has two players sitting

opposite each other at a table, with aping-pong ball in the center Eachplayer tries to move the ball toward theopponent by relaxing. Relaxing reducesthe player's stress level, creating alphawaves in the brain that sensors pick upto move the bali forward. This taskrequires self-control, and thus taps intointrapersonal intelligence. However, theplayers must aiso employ interpersonalintelligence, paying attention to eachother and trying to produce more alphawaves than tbe opponent does.

A third notable Explorama activity isa computerized questionnaire in whichparticipants assess their own intelli-gence profiles. Participants take the self-assessment before entenng the Explo-

interaction, emotional reactions,conversation, and so on. An individual'sinterpersonal intelligence affects his orher ability to work in groups. Groupprojects can create environments forstudents to improve their interpersonalintelligence as they develop other skillsand knowledge.

Donna Schneider, a 3rd grade teacherat the John E Kennedy Elementary'School in Brewster, New York, devel-oped a real-world publishing companyin her classroom: "Schneider's Ink."Each spring wben the school puts onperformances and events, Schneider's3rd graders create programs, banners,advertisements, and other publicitymaterials for their clients, the spon-soring teachers. Each student assumes adifferent jobeditor, sales manager.

One "IQ" measure is insufficientto evaluate, label, and plan educationprograms for all students.rama and again after tbey bave engagedin the various activities and tasks.Participants thus get an idea of bow wellthey know their own capabilities. Tbeyalso can compare their self-assessmentsbefore and after the Explorama experi-ence to leam whether their self-perceptions stayed constant or changed.This process develops participants'intrapersonal intelligence.

Get PersonalThe orientation toward profiles, interac-tions, and experience emphasizes aneed to develop, in particular, the twopersonal intelligences.

Intrapersonal intelligence involvesknowing yourselfyour talents, energylevel, interests, and so on. Students whostrengthen tbeir intrapersonal intelli-gence gam a better understanding ofareas in which they can expect to excel,which helps them plan and govern theirown learning.

Interpersonal intelligence involvesunderstanding others through social

typist, accountant, customer servicerepresentative, or designer Beforetaking on a given position, eacb studentwrites a resume and cover letter, obtainsletters of recommendation, and is inter-viewed by the teacher. Students exploretheir own strengths and become awareof how those strengths can enable themto succeed in various jobs.

Schneiders Ink also engages students'interpersonal intelligence. For example,the quality-control manager, who isresponsible for handling customercomplaints, has to work with bothclients and tbe editor to review prob-lems. As company employees, thestudents juggle simultaneous printorders, coordinating the sequencing oftasks among themselves to producehigh-quality work on time. Tbey mustunderstand others through social inter-action, emotional reactions, and conver-sation. Through this process, studentsacquire a better understanding of theinterdependence of individual strengths(Kornhaber, Eierros, & Veenema, 2004).

Building Active LearnersThe multiple intelligences approachdoes not require a teacber to design alesson in nine different ways so that allstudents can access the material. Rather,it involves creating rich experiences inwhich students with different intelli-gence profiles can interact with thematerials and ideas using their partic-ular combinations of strengths andweaknesses.

Often, these experiences are collabo-rative. As tbe amount of infonnationthat studentsand adultsmustprocess continues to increase dramati-cally, collaboration enables students tolearn more by tapping into others'strengths as well as into their own. Inideal multiple intelligences instruction,rich experiences and collaborationprovide a context for students tobecome aware of their own intelligenceprofiles, to develop self-regulation, andto participate more actively in their ownlearning. 10

ReferencesGardner, H. (2006). Multiple intelligences:

New horizons. New York: BaslcBooks.Gardner, H., Feldman, D. H., &

Krechevsky, M. (Eds.). (1998). ProjectZero frameworks for early childhood educa-tion: Volume 1. Building on children'sstrengths: The experierice of Project Spec-trum. New York: Teachers College Press.

Kornhaber, M., Fierros, E., & Veenema, S.(2004). Mukipk inteiligences: Best ideasfrom research and practice. Boston:Pearson.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: Thedevelopment ojhigher psyeholo^caiprocesses. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press.

Seana Moran (moranse@gse.harvard,edu) is an advanced doctoral student atthe Harvard Graduate Schooi of Educa-tion. Mindy Kornhaber (Kornhaberpsu.edu) is an Associate Professor in theCollege of Education at The PennsylvaniaState University. Howard Gardner(hgasst@pz.harvard.edu), the originatorof the theory of multiple intelligences, isthe John H. and Elisabeth A. HobbsProfessor of Cognition and Education atthe Harvard Graduate School of Educationand Senior Director of Harvard ProjectZero.

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