Multiple intelligences

The geneses:

Last year the team of teachers attended a lecture by two Canadian teachers, Mr Gervais Sirois and Mrs Sylvie Dubé about “Multiple intelligences”. We pointed out our thinking and practice on ourselves first, to be able to transfer this experience to the pupils. Since then, some of us are teaching with this new point of view, especially with children with special needs. The teachers pay special attention to make the pupils use different ways of learning by proposing them different attitudes regarding the 7 types of intelligences.

What do multiple intelligences mean?

I invite you to read the article by Carla Lane from "The Distance Learning Technology Resource”.

Howard Gardner of Harvard has identified seven distinct intelligences. This theory has emerged from recent cognitive research and "documents the extent to which students possess different kinds of minds and therefore learn, remember, perform, and understand in different ways," according to Gardner (1991). According to this theory, "we are all able to know the world through language, logical-mathematical analysis, spatial representation, musical thinking, the use of the body to solve problems or to make things, an understanding of other individuals, and an understanding of ourselves. Where individuals differ is in the strength of these intelligences - the so-called profile of intelligences -and in the ways in which such intelligences are invoked and combined to carry out different tasks, solve diverse problems, and progress in various domains."

I invite you to read more about Howard Gardner’s works on Wikipedia or on many other websites. Nowadays most of the teachers are teaching using different ways to help the understanding and learning; but the strength of the method is to combine and to think about all this intelligences to make it easier for the children, especially the ones who resist at “traditional teaching”. When you propose Playmobil to learn a foreign language you use bodily-kinesthetic intelligence by using the body, touching things.

Dominique Mottet – teacher of Sainte Thérèse for pupils with special needs