Intelligence is proposed to comprise several relatively independent modalities rather than one general factor.
Gardner proposed the modalities in 1983 on criteria including neurological isolability and a distinct developmental course. Psychometric work continues to find a substantial general factor that the theory does not predict. Its adoption in schools mostly took the form it least supports, that of teaching each child in their strongest modality.
In practice
- A school labels each pupil with an intelligence and teaches accordingly, which is the application its author disowned.
- A theory whose entry criteria were set by one author is difficult to falsify by adding or removing a modality.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation for its reception is dissatisfaction with reducing ability to a single number. Another is institutional: it arrived when schools were looking for ways to recognise pupils who did poorly on conventional tests.
- In its favour
- It broadened what schools count as ability, and drew attention to musical, spatial and interpersonal skills that testing had ignored.
- Against it
- Psychometric work keeps finding a substantial general factor that the theory does not predict, the criteria for admitting a new intelligence are the author's own, and teaching to a pupil's supposed intelligence has not shown benefits.
- Standing
- The criteria for admitting a modality are Gardner's own and not empirically derived, and the theory has not produced the psychometric independence it predicts. Gardner has himself objected to its use as a theory of learning styles.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Learning & Education
- Essay
- Theories of teaching, and what schools are for