Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences
Learner diversity is an issue that has taken a great importance in the classroom over the past 20-25 years. Australia is a multicultural nation and therefore it is important that the modern education system reflects this. ‘Educators do not believe that all learners are the same’ (Burke, 2001) then why is the average classroom across Australia target to the same audience of students and not accommodating of different students needs and their backgrounds? The theory of multiple intelligences was developed by Howard Gardner. The intelligences that Gardener describes are ‘logical-mathematical, linguistic, musical, spatial, bodily-kinaesthetic, interpersonal (understanding of others), intrapersonal (understanding of self), and naturalist’ (Snowman, Dobozy, Scevak, Bryer, Bartleft, & Biehler, 2009, p. 113). Gardner also ‘argues that there is both a biological and cultural basis for the multiple intelligences’ (Anonymous, 2005, p. 13) meaning that multiple intelligences aren’t solely dictated by biological factors or cultural factors but rather a combination of both.
Learning styles also have a large impact on how a student performs at school. These learning styles are sensing learners or intuitive learners, visual learners or verbal learners, inductive learners or deductive learners, active learners or reflective learners and sequential learners or global learners (Sleigh, 2002, p. 17). I have experienced the disadvantages of not catering for all learning styles. In Year 9 my English teacher instructed all lessons from the front of the class and although they were at the front of the class they never wrote notes, drew diagrams or made any markings on the whiteboard. I am a visual learner so therefore I found this subject extremely difficult because I relied solely on what was said in the classes but this was never reinforced with writing. My learning was heavily stunted by this lack of visual stimulus.
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