Howard Gardner defined intelligence in a much broader way than previously defined. From Gardner’s research, he formulated nine different ‘frames of mind’ or multiple intelligences. After taking the assessment and being a part of our class discussion about this topic, what did you learn? Why is his theory important to know as a future (or present) early childhood educator?
From Howard Garners multiple intelligence theory, one can learn that intelligence is not relatively fixed or easily tested and limited to certain areas such as verbal and reasoning skills.
On the contrary, people do not have just one intellectual ability but rather multiple talents and abilities which are denoted through his nine frames of intelligences or rather abilities. The abilities that people can have as put forward by Gardner can be summarized as linguistic or verbal, logical or mathematical, visual or spatial, bodily of kinesthetic, musical or rhythmic, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalistic intelligence.
This particular theory of multiple intelligence is important to know as an early childhood educator because it highlights on the need of the teacher to understand that children have different abilities.
Therefore, as a teacher, one should focus on assess the different kinds of abilities that children have and not just focus on a limited set of abilities or rather talents. As an educator, teaching ought to be structured in a manner that is assess the abilities of children on different aspects as explained by garner.
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