Bruce Gardner's Theory Of Multiple Intelligence In The Classroom

The average person spends at least twelve years of their life in school listening to a teacher lecturing. Imagine how effective each persons schooling would be if the teachers understood how to cater to different intelligences. Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligence comes into play at this point. Gardner theorizes that there are around eight or nine different intelligences and each intelligence needs to be exercised in order to be refined. The goal should be to become balanced and proficient in as many intelligences as possible.

The different forms of intelligence are as follow, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, logical-mathematical, musical, natural, verbal-linguistic, visual-spatial, and (often overlooked) is existential

This brings forward using “centers” in the classroom. Bruce Campbell successfully tried grouping his students activities and learning into centers. In his centers his students build models, play, dance, make group decisions, sing and write songs, use deductive reasoning, read, write, and draw all in one day. The work at the centers helped the students make presentations of their studies that are informative as well as entertaining and involve more than one intelligence concept. In his classroom experiment, he found that his students became more responsible for their own actions as well as the students having less discipline problems. Each student learned new skills and their group skills improved as well as their grades. The students started to actually enjoy school and their self-confidence and desire to do well in school increased. Bruce Campbell observed changes in himself as a teacher as well. He found that he started to work with his students rather than for them. He developed more satisfaction in their enthusiasm for learning than he did in their test scores and having to sit quietly. Most importantly, he found that he was learning along with his students, becoming more creative and multimodal in his own thinking. He saw growth and development possibly even more in himself than in his students.

Carolina Ellingson also worked with Multiple Intelligence. She discovered that students build a sense

when a teacher understands the multiple intelligences of their students, they can nurture and nudge students in the right direction. When students have the ability to learn the same subject in several different ways, the chance that they will understand and retain the subject multiplies. They develop social skills and learn to understand themselves in new ways. The students find new interests and the model quickly adapts to students rather than students having to adapt (or unfortunately fail to adapt) to the model. If we educate all of our students to their full potential in the classroom, then society will benefit because each student will fine their niche as an