Gardner

**Howard Gardener**

__**Background Information**__

Howard Gardener is an American psychologist who studied at Harvard College and had the opportunity to work along side with Erik Erikson. Over the course of his profession, Gardener has been an adjunct professor of psychology at Harvard University as well as an adjunct professor of neurology at the Boston University School of Medicine.Currently Howard Gardener is a Professor in Cognition and Education at the Harvard in their Graduate School of Education as well as the Senior Director of Harvard Project Zero.

__** The Big Idea **__

Dr. Howard Gardner is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences which suggests that there is more to intelligence than simply IQ. The platform for Gardner’s thinking evolved when he looked at research in the cognitive realm. Here he pieced together the notion that individuals all have different minds and therefor the ways in which we learn, remember, perform, and understand vary. For Gardner, intelligence is a set of skills we have to gain new knowledge in order to create a product or create solutions to problems. Because Gardner believes we use a set of skills to do learn, Gardner believes instead of one traditional intelligence we have at least eight forms of intelligences:

Concrete eight:
 * **Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence** (body smart)
 * **Interpersonal intelligence** (people smart)
 * **Intrapersonal intelligence** (self smart)
 * **Linguistic intelligence** (word smart)
 * **Logical-mathematical intelligence** (number/reasoning smart)
 * **Musical intelligence** (music smart)
 * **Naturalist intelligence** (nature smart)
 * **Spatial intelligence** (picture smart)

Potentially in the works:
 * **Existential Intelligence** (life/big picture smart)

Dr. Gardener believes everyone can learn from the world around them, but in their own way. Our school systems as well as culture focuses most of their attention on what he identifies as linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence. In reality, Dr. Gardener thinks that individuals can have different strengths and abilities with the intelligences and that is how they can best perform tasks, solve problems, and learn. Principles of the theory: 1) While learning, individuals should be encouraged to use their preferred intelligences. 2) Learning opportunities should appeal to different forms of intelligence. 3) Learning should be assessed and measure by multiple forms of intelligence. media type="youtube" key="l2QtSbP4FRg" height="315" width="420" align="center"

__** Theory Connections **__ While attending university, Gardner had the opportunity to work and study with Erik Erikson, who quickly became a mentor figure. Further down his career, Gardner was influenced by psychologists Jeane Piaget, Jerome Bruner, and philosopher Nelson Goodman. All four men played a role in the way Gardner gravitated to human cognitive development and unfolded his thinking as well as theory.

Bloom also believes that not all students are able to learn in the same manor learn in the same way and that teacher should look at the way they are teaching in order to match the student with the instruction and learning approach.

Robert J. Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence also looks at intelligence at multiple levels of intelligence including: componential, experiential, and practical. Sternberg thinks that intelligence is linked to life in real-world environments.

J.P. Guilford’s Structure of Intellect (SI) theory organizes an individual’s intellectual performance under three layers: operations, content, and products which then includes 150 different sub-level intellectual abilities, some of which that overlap with Gardner theory.

__**Resources:**__


 * http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/education/ed_mi_overview.html
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 * http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/multiple_intelligences.php
 * http://otec.uoregon.edu/intelligence.htm#Perkins
 * http://www.qic.qld.edu.au/Gardners_Multiple_Intelligences_Theory.html