Multiple Intelligences in Teacher Training

Rosie Tanner

"Spelling isn't everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn't count " Rabbit. The World of Pooh. A. A. Milne.

Puzzle

My nearly two-year-old son plays a lot with puzzles and building blocks, working out for himself where the pieces fit together. His second favourite activity at the moment is clambering about the furniture (the sofa, the bed, the steps) and jumping off, though he hasn't quite yet got the idea of bending his knees at the right moment when he lands. He also likes "reading" picture books and naming objects, animals or actions that he sees: "moon", "elephant", "sleeping". When he meets a special friend they run up and down and shriek in delight because they are together; five minutes later, she pushes him over because he stole her toy - and then he cries in utter despair. Which of his Multiple Intelligences is he developing in each situation?

MI Theory

I started reading about Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligence (MI) theory' (Gardner 1993) about a year ago. Gardner believes that we each possess eight or more intelligences which function together as a whole - he has named Musical, Bodily- Kinaesthetic, Logical-Mathematical, Linguistic, Spatial, Interpersonal, Intrapemnal, Naturalistic "intelligences" - and I find this theory very appealing and convincing; I wanted to do something practical with it in my own work. Last year, I was teaching on a four-year initial teacher training course for secondary school teachers; in this article, I shall introduce you to how I tried to put MI theory into practice wh

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