The Theory of Multiple Intelligences is kind of a big deal.

First presented to a larger audience by Howard Gardner in his 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, MI theory changed the way many educators think about and approach teaching and learning.

Here's the gist: Gardner claimed that there are many ways to be smart, and not all of them can be measured using IQ tests or other bubble-sheet tests.

Doesn't sound too revolutionary, but it's one of the biggest things to happen to education in decades.

MI theory has caused educators to rethink not only the ways in which they present material to students, but also the ways in which they ask students to demonstrate their learning. Most importantly, though, MI theory has elevated the stature of a few different kinds of "smart" that have traditionally played second (third, fourth, and fifth) fiddle to the intelligences that enable students to excel at reading, writing, and arithmetic.

The Eight Intelligences

If you're old enough (or well-read enough), you may remember that Gardner's original theory had just seven intelligences. If not…now you know.

Anyway, today there are eight, and in the near future, there may be nine or ten. Or 42.

 

Eight infinity signs that looks like eights. How many intelligences is that?

But why? Because: Gardner and his colleagues are always on the lookout for new kinds of intelligence that haven't been accounted for yet. We'll get to what is required for one of these ways of being smart to be considered an intelligence in just a minute (if the suspense is just too much, go ahead and skip down two subheadings). But first, let's look at what the current eight intelligences are.

1. Spatial: Think LEGO wizard, future architect or artist, or just someone who's really good at answering those questions on IQ tests about what a particular shape would look like if it were rotated, flipped, or viewed from a different perspective. People with spatial intelligence are the ones who know where the car is parked because relationships in space—which mall entrance you came in and which way you turned—stick in their brains and make total sense. LEGOland, here we come.

2. Bodily-Kinesthetic: These are the people who excel at using their bodies: dancers, athletes, certain actors or comedians, and just about anyone who has a talent for movement whether it comes down to manual dexterity, eye-hand coordination, or complex whole-body endeavors.

3. Musical: All those folks in Pitch Perfect as well as the cast of Glee clearly possess this intelligence. If you have great rhythm, a knack for creating, singing, or playing melodies, or maybe a Beethovenian penchant for composing, you may possess it, too.

4. Linguistic: These folks like words. Aptly named, we know. Willie Shakespeare, Toni Morrison, and anyone who gravitates toward the rhythm, meter, sound, or meaning of words probably possess linguistic intelligence. If you want to find a whole bunch of these people together, check out the staff at your local library or bookstore or crash a crossword convention or a foreign language conference.

5. Logical-Mathematical: People with the L-M intelligence are good at finding patterns and completing mathematical equations. They see relationships between numbers, but also between effects and their causes. You might find them spending extra time on their science labs because the scientific process, deductive reasoning, and the examination of actions and reactions is what really lights their Bunsen burners.

6. Interpersonal: People with large quantities of this intelligence can talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Interpersonal intelligence is what allows someone to read body language and social cues, to relate to others and understand social situations. You want at least one person with this sort of intelligence at your dinner party. Otherwise those awkward silences could get very…awkward.

7. Intrapersonal: Hm. Sounds a lot like inTERpersonal, doesn't it? The difference with inTRApersonal intelligence is that it has more to do with an individual's relationship to the world than the relationships between people. Someone with this intelligence would have a really good handle on his or her own views and opinions, feelings and anxieties, and even goals and dreams. In other words, people with intrapersonal intelligence are highly self-aware and super capable of making personal decisions based on this self-knowledge. They don't have to solicit ten different opinions before they decide to get a haircut, and they don't need to make a lot of declarative statements about who they are. They know.

8. Naturalistic: Think Rachel Carson or John Muir. Someone with naturalistic intelligence notices small distinctions in plant life, enjoys being outdoors, can tell you which clouds are cirrus and which are stratus (and what you call the ones that every kindergarten kid draws in art class).

Number Nine (and Ten)

There's a ninth intelligence that's been under consideration for a while but has yet to earn final approval: existential. People with this particular intelligence gravitate toward the big questions. What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it—you know, that kind of stuff.

And the tenth? If you haven't heard this one before, you're going to love it: pedagogical. How validating is that? Pedagogical intelligence, though yet to be officially classified, involves having the ability to convey knowledge to others.

Jackpot.

How Does Something Get "Intelligence" Status?

That's what both Existential and Pedagogical would like to know. Right now they're just sitting around like that lonely bill on Capitol Hill, waiting for someone to make them into a law—or rather, an intelligence. So what does it take?

The simple answer is that it has to satisfy the eight criteria Gardner lays out in Chapter Four of Frames of Mind. According to infed.org, a nonprofit organization of YMCA George Williams College in London, a way of being smart must meet the following criteria to qualify as an intelligence (and we quote):

• Potential isolation by brain damage. I.e., the existence of idiot savants, prodigies and other exceptional individuals.
• An identifiable core operation or set of operations.
• A distinctive development history, along with a definable set of 'end-state' performances.
• An evolutionary history and evolutionary plausibility.
• Support from experimental psychological tasks.
• Support from psychometric findings.
• Susceptibility to encoding in a symbol system. (Howard Gardner 1983: 62-69)

Not sure you get how all those criteria work in practice? That's why we put the link up there for you. But we'll give you a quote from it for good measure:

"Candidates for the title 'an intelligence' had to satisfy a range of these criteria and must include, as a prerequisite, the ability to resolve 'genuine problems or difficulties' (ibid.: 60) within certain cultural settings."

So, finding the way to grandmother's house or interpreting a work of art.

For a more in depth description of Gardner's criteria, we suggest a thorough read of Chapter Four of Frames of Mind, but before you rush off to do that, we have one more thing you should know about Multiple Intelligences.

They're NOT Learning Styles

At least, that's not the way Gardner intended them to be taken. In the years since his MI theory hit the streets, lots of people have been clamoring to find out what kind of intelligences they possess, and in the process, many people have begun to speak of the eight intelligences as ways of learning.

"I'm a linguistic learner—I have to see things written down."

OR

"Bodily-kinesthetic learners need to incorporate movement for things to really make sense to them."

These are both perfectly valid statements. Some people can't think if you tie their hands behind their backs, and others won't really be able to commit something to memory or feel like they get it until they see it in writing or write it down themselves.

But these ideas both suggest that Gardner's intelligences are learning styles, and Gardner is adamant that they are not. (What is a learning style, you ask? Check out the seven that most closely resemble Gardner's intelligences right here.)

Instead, Gardner says the intelligences of MI Theory are like eight independent computers that are at work inside us all. We all possess all eight of these computers—one that helps us process linguistic information, another that helps us with our interpersonal relationships, and so on—but in each and every one of us, some of these computers work better than others.

So if it's board game night and one of your friends always wins at chess and the other one at Scrabble, it's fair to say that one of them has a better spatial computer while the other comes out on top in the linguistic computer department. And yeah, one of your eight computers may blow the other seven away, making it so that people are always commenting on what a gifted speaker you are but rarely inviting you out to play catch or join the local choir.

Further, Gardner says that seizing on a particular intelligence—let's say musical for example's sake—and calling it a learning style implies that a person with a really good computer for musical information would not only be inclined to approach every task from that perspective, but would also need all information pertaining to math, science, literature, and movement presented with an eye toward that musical computer. This could translate into the idea that if Suzie the concert pianist doesn't understand algebra, all a teacher needs to do is play some music in class, set the lessons to music, or have her demonstrate her understanding by writing a song.

Hmmm. We've heard the "Pop goes the weasel" version of the quadratic formula, but it may not work so well for interpreting Ulysses.

Gardner encourages teachers to individualize instruction as much as possible and to teach the same information in multiple ways. But pigeonholing Suzie as having a musical learning style, and not encouraging her to develop other forms of learning just because she's heavy on the musical intelligence, may not be helpful at all.

Of course, a lot of people are still going to think of Gardner's intelligences as learning styles, which is why you may have found this entry under the heading, ahem, "Learning Styles." Yes, it will make Howard Gardner cringe. Maybe we should have put it under "Creating Curriculum" instead, since we think Gardner would approve of that placement.

You can read Gardner's thoughts on the whole "learning styles" issue in his Washington Post op-ed, and if you still have questions about MI Theory, take a minute to check out his FAQ pdf ASAP.