Multiple intelligences is (mostly) a crock. Please, please, please, don't buy into it.
That's what half of my professors have said.[/quote]
So what's the alternative? We've been taught multiple intelligences was a pretty well-accepted theory.[/QUOTE]
Not even close to well-accepted. It is the theory of intelligence with the LEAST amount of support for it. Yet it is taught in every gen psych class and was snatched up by the education field real quick.
Here's the skinny on multiple intelligences: If you have a psychological construct, like musical intelligence, logical intelligence, etc., and you have a measure for it, your measures should NOT correlate with each other. They have to be independent if they are truly different constructs. Someone has to be able to have a high musical intelligence and EITHER a high, moderate, or low logical intelligence. These things cannot be linked, otherwise they are just expressions of a singular intelligence. You can probably guess where I'm going with this. The 7 (8, or more, depending on which version of multiple intelligences you are taught) different intelligences DO correlate with each other (many do, not all), which implies they are measure the same thing, not different things. On top of that, some of the multiple intelligences (like interpersonal intelligence) correlate with established measures of
personality. Now, it is certainly possibly that those personality measures are just measures of intelligence, but in order to accept that you have to give up the idea of personality characteristics. Then everything becomes some type of intelligence.
So what else is there? A variety of options. Some favor fluid and crystallized intelligence as a distinction. Fluid is the ability to handle novel problems, creativity, etc. and crystallized refers to skills and knowledge that are learned in response to specific situations or problems. Another possibility is general intelligence (g) and specialized intelligence (s). g refers to an innate cognitive ability. It basically determines your maximum potential and affects ability on all tasks that require intelligence. s refers to the learned abilities, basically your training in a certain area (like music or math or poetry or psychology). It comes from experience and is affected by and limited by g but is derived from what you've learned. There are other theories as well, like the triarchic theory, which talks about practical intelligence and abstract intelligence, etc.
In my opinion, intelligence is extremely hard to disentangle from other things. In part, I think we have to accept that intelligence is in the eye of the beholder. In part, it is simply training. Einstein said the only reason he was considered a genius was because he spent more time thinking about physics than most other people. In the end, multiple intelligences doesn't
explain anything. It offers a way to label or categorize but that is it. Yes, it is good to keep in mind that students are unique, with varying experiences and personalities. We don't serve them by classifying them by the way they think, especially when that classification system is flawed.
Btw, it turns out "learning styles" are bunk as well.
---------- Post added at 03:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:07 PM ----------
Multiple intelligences is (mostly) a crock. Please, please, please, don't buy into it.
You really need to back up something like that with a link or something, if you want us to take you seriously. Not saying your wrong, but you need to give us SOMETHING
[/QUOTE]
Sorry. I had to rush off to class. I gave you a nice wall of text. If you want links, I can provide some but a lot of that stuff is relatively accurate on Wikipedia (under criticisms).
My psychology professors both told me that, but it's only briefly mentioned in the textbooks.
