Multiple+Learning+Intelligences+and+Student+Learning

=Multiple Intelligences & Student Learning =



SITE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

 * How do the researchers’ findings compare with your own experiences in schools?
 * What types of intelligences or learning styles do most schools teach to and favor in classroom learning experiences?
 * What are the implications of these patterns for students' learning in schools?
 * What might you do differently to teach in ways that support and affirm all types of intelligences and learning styles?

__//The Importance of Mindset //__
Fast Company magazine published an article about **how people’s beliefs about their “intelligence” affects their performance in sports, business, and other professions**. The article cites research by Carol Dweck of Stanford University and author of the book, //MindSet: The New Psychology of Success// (New York: Random House, 2006). Dweck contends that people have one of two different mindsets, either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.

A person with **a fixed mindset** sees her or his talents, abilities and i**ntelligence as** **determined at birth by genetics, and not subject to change**. Accordingly, **for a fixed mindset the goal is to go through life avoiding challenges that might lead to failure**. A person with **a growth mindset**, by contrast, sees her or his talents, abilities, and **intelligence as fluid, always in a state of change based on experience and practice**. Therefore,**for a growth mindset, l****ife is a series of new challenges to be met and refined**.

Mindsets play a powerful role in school performance. Encountering a difficult or unfamiliar math problem, youngsters with a fixed mindset might say “I have never been good at math” or “Math is not my thing,” signifying an inherent belief that no matter how hard they may try, they basically lack the intuitive intellectual capacity to understand the concepts, or worse, to successfully learn math. Youngsters who view their own intelligence in more open, malleable terms through a growth mindset believe that they can learn just about anything they put their minds to learning. Facing the same math problem, a student might say “I can do it if you show me how” or “With a little (or a lot) of effort and practice, I will learn how to figure it out.” These students are confident in their abilities, and, they still see themselves as able to learn what they want or need to learn.

While university professors speak about multiple intelligences and the learning potentials of every youngster, **many teachers assume that intelligence is a fixed entity and no amount of school can change it. Mindset research challenges these assumptions**, maintaining that teachers (and student teachers) enormously impact the way that students view themselves as learners.

===__//Beating the Odds //__: //__Teaching Middle and High School Students to Read and Write Well (Langer, 2000)__// === In 2000, researchers from the National Research Center on English Learning and Achievement (State University of New York at Albany; available online http://www.albany.edu/cela/research/project2.11.htm spent two years observing teachers in middle and high schools in Florida, California, New York, and Texas. In schools that were producing better English test scores than other schools with comparable demographics, teachers shared the following instructional practices:

o **Teachers used several different types of lessons to skills and content [VARIETY]**. o Test preparation was integrated into instruction [ONGOING REFLECTION AND ASSESSMENT]. o Teachers made connections across instruction, curriculum, grades and students lives outside the classroom [INTERDISCIPLINARY & INTEGRATED CONNECTIONS]. o Students learned strategies for thinking about their work as well as doing it. The process of arriving at an answer was emphasized [THINKING ABOUT THINKING STRATEGIES]. o Teachers required students to take what they had learned and probe deeper to generate new knowledge [APPLICATION AND RESEARCH ASSIGNMENTS]. o Students engaged in “cognitive collaboration.” Working in small groups pushed each other’s thinking [GROUP WORK AND CLASS DISCUSSION]. 