ABOUT Howard Gardner

Howard Gardner was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1943. As a child, he loved to read and play the piano. He attended Harvard University and got a bachelor's degree in social relations. He was influenced by Jean Piaget to study developmental psychology. After he earned his doctoral degree, he started working with both gifted children and children with brain injuries. While working with them, he developed his theory of multiple intelligences.

Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Gardner noticed that a person's intelligence was represented by a single IQ score. He explained how human intelligence is represented in many different ways. He came up with eight different categories of intelligence: logical-mathematical, musical, linguistic, bodily kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist. Gardner's theory explains how everyone has all of these, but each person has each intelligence on different levels. 

Gardner first presented his theory in his book Frames of Mind.

Classroom Application

When teaching, teachers should focus on the specific intelligences of each student. If a student has a strong musical intelligence, the teacher should focus their teaching on that. Not every student can learn the same materials in the same way.

Students will be able to show their strengths, and they will learn more because they will be more engaged.