Multiple Intelligences
i understand there is a diversity of individuals in the class. Regardless of the multiple intelligences, I teach the same across the board,and everyone is expected to do their best to achieve success.
Robert,
Thank you for making this very important point. Yes, we have to cover the same content each time we teach the course but we need to strive in our instructional planning to customize it to the current group of students so we can feel confident we are reaching them.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
While it is important to teach the same material and/or course content with each class, I find that no 2 individuals have the same way of processing the information. I try to find what their strengths are and vary the presentation to those areas. Knowing ways that they easily remember things is helpful in providing the new information in a format that they are more likely to remember and understand.
Marsha,
By offering different ways of memorizing content/terms you can appeal to their different intelligences and learning preferences. You are on the right track with the approach you are using now.
Gary
Dr. Gary Meers
Teaching to multiple intelligences can be difficult. I teach Medical and so much is rote learning, especially with Med Term. I do bring in tactile elements for students, but I cannot make them memorize.
Christopher,
The key is to offer a variety of instructional deliveries just as input from business will come from a variety of sources. This way the students can develop skill in working in different learning preference areas and can adapt just as they will need to in the work world. This will make them more attractive as potential employees.
Gary
Dr. Gary Meers
Consistency is important. While people may learn differently, business does not adapt itself to suit every person, people are expected to adapt to the business. Catering to a student can actually in my view cause that student to begin to expect to be catered to.
Shaun,
Good point because we have so varied backgrounds and life experiences in our student body. So the more we can incorporate variety while remaining consistent in our requirements the more effective we will be.
Gary
Dr. Gary Meers
Considering the variety learning backgrounds and the vast spans in age of some of our students, I believe it is good to be consistent across the board. Some variations in the presentation of the material is required to entice some students learning styles.
Well said, Stephanie!
I firmly believe that there are many ways of knowing and processing information taken in from the world around you. As a writer and English teacher, I have just been fortunate that my skills of knowing coincide with the education system's linguistico-centric stance. This can be directly inhibitory of certain people's learning abilities if they aren't accommodated.
Stephanie,
Having researched multiple intelligences and the assessment of them for the last 25 years I can really appreciate your comments and examples. Thank you for sharing them. I have created an assessment called the "Talent Key" that reveals the three most dominant intelligences for individual learners. I then help instructors to develop teaching strategies that will engage all learners in a number of different ways so at one time or another their dominant intelligences are used. The results are highly engaged and motivated learners that are being successful after thinking they couldn't be.
Gary
Dr. Gary Meers
I suppose this is one way of teaching. I have, unfortunately, known many people who do not learn as well in a "traditional" manner--where the teacher "teaches the same across the board." These people have been labeled incompetent or incapable and were told they just didn't "do their best to achieve success." The worst part of that is it is not because they are not able to achieve success, but because the material was not presented in a way that they could understand or they were not allowed to use their preferred methods because they weren't deemed "classroom appropriate." My husband is very strong in body/kinesthetic intelligence, musical/rhythmic intelligence, and interpersonal intelligence. He likes to move, make noise, and talk to people--not appropriate for classrooms! Now, I admit he is highly motivated and majored in psychology, so he could identify this about himself and did most of his learning outside the classroom, in study groups and situations he found for himself. But most of my students are entering college later in life, and often have had so much stigmatization, so much negativity, in their lives that they no longer know how to find these learning opportunities for themselves. Or worse, they have come to believe the negative comments. When you work with students who have ADHD (often highly kinesthetic learners) or other qualities that make the less traditional intelligences more prominent, who aren't skilled in the linguistic and mathematical intelligences we consider "typical" (like most career college and technical school students), I think remembering to reach different intelligences is important. As instructors, if we don't help them learn in the classroom, if we don't adapt and work to improve our teaching, making material accessible to as many intelligences as we can, instead of doing the same thing no matter what, are we really doing our jobs to the best of our ability? I guess my argument is, yes, you can teach that way. But is that really the most effective way to teach? I'm not sure it is, at least not for me...Not after seeing so many people I know get taught that way, fail, and quit; not after realizing that if they had only been approached differently, they could have done so much more.
