Writer and publisher of books for children

Wednesday 6 May 2009

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES

I have just written a piece about Multiple Intelligences for EzineArticles. MI is about the different ways people demonstrate intelligence, via verbal, visual, logical, kinaesthetic, musical, interpersonal or intrapersonal preferences. While researching this, I came across a couple of blogs where the writers are rather scathing about MI as it applies to educating children. They make some valid points about the difficulties of measuring it, how it may encourage children to misbehave on the premise that they can't learn other than through visual/logical/interpersonal etc means.

I still think MI has some validity and this is based on unscientific observation. I am a verbal/linguistic and visual person. That's the way I learn. I have observed learning biases in children I have helped over the years and consequently I structure lessons in such a way that all the children have an opportunity to grasp the learning material via their particular preference. This makes planning more taxing but the lessons flow better and the children are more engaged for longer periods of time. I take the point that success might be due to repetition of the material to accommodate as many learning style as possible but I'd rather do it this way than take the chance that someone will get left behind.

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