Multiple Intelligences in Teacher Training

4. To help trainees become aware of how

they best learn and how they might further develop their own intelligences.

To illustrate, in the box you can find three of the assignments that I gave to my trainees. They are, I now feel, far from optimal, but I want to share with you my initial ideas of how I tried to put MI Theory into practice. Some detail has been omitted to save space.

Assignment A: Intrapersonal Assignment B: Interpersonal Assignment C: Spatial

Musical X X X

Bodily-Kinesthetic Yes X Yes

Logical-Mathematica X X ?

Linguistic Yes X Yes

Spatial X Yes Yes

Interpersonal Yes Yes X

Intrapersonal Yes ? X

Figure 1. Which intelligences are included in each assignment?

Afterthoughts

Although I designed these tasks with the idea of each one being based on one particular intelligence, I realise now that this is an impossible task, since "All of these intelligences work together in an integrated whole" (Jack et al 1996). I have now examined the three assignments in terms of how many of the intelligences are included in each one, as in the matrix in Figure 1. A tick (3) means that the intelligence seems

to be included in the assignment, a cross (X) that it isn't and a question mark (?) that I'm not sure.

I can now see that "Assignment A: lntrapersonal", as well as covering intrapersonal intelligence (reflecting on what type of feedback I give), includes three other intelligences: bodily- kinaesthetic intelligence (students had to physically go and find school pupils' work to give feedback on); linguistic intelligence (writing the feedback, writing up the answers to my questions); and perhaps interpersonal intelligence, since the trainees might have had to ask another teacher for pupils' writing, or for

permission to use that writing. A similar analysis can be made of the other assignments.

Trainee reactions

In general, the trainees reacted quite enthusiastically to the assignments. One wrote, "The assignments ware OK because there were assignments for everyone. It doesn't matter what you like doing best, you could pick the ones that appealed to you most. I liked the assignments I did and the fact that you could choose from different ones so that everybody could find a assignment that matched his or her Multiple Intelligences, although another trainee thought "the file assignments were an awful lot of work."

I was personally most gratified by the creative results of the assignments based on Spatial Intelligence. Some trainees appeared at my office door with huge colourful posters that they had brought in by train and bike, and included not only pictures and photos on their collages but also pieces of old cassette tape, trainee work, quotes from poems or from themselves. And their comments on this particular assignment also seemed to be the most enthusiastic, viz. 'I have always been a bit of a creative type, Some of the pictures in the collage might seem a bit strange to you... but once you have read my paragraphs you might understand it better.

and 'I always liked making collages and really liked making one that had to summarise my ideas about teaching speaking" and "I always need to see and visualise things, otherwise I

do not understand what is said or what people mean. When I read a book or a text I can imagine what it looks like and have some picture or film in my head. "

Here are some more trainee comments on the MI assignments, which reveal why they chose the assignments that they did, as well as some of their beliefs about teaching:

Musical

'I'm a real lover of music. The first thing I do in the morning is get my remote control and turn on my radio. "

"This way the students learn something in a nice way and might remember more that way because the way to learn is much nicer. "

Bodily-Kinaesthetic

"The reason I chose the BK assignment is probably because I hate to sit still during classes as well. I need to move around, I need to organise and I need some challenge. "

'I like activities where my students are active in whatever they learn in whatever way. I like the idea of my students walling around in my classroom and asking for information. "

linguistic

'I chose [the linguistic assignment] because I wanted to know what my teaching practice teacher was thinking about the students learning to speak English. I wondered if the teacher would think the same way as I did and I thought I might learn a lot from his experience. "

Interpersonal

"I decided against the interpersonal

assignment because I felt it would be a big hassle to get to work with somebody else... " 'I also did the assignment because I like working together with Martin and I enjoy group and pair work. "

Logical-Mathematical

"learners like problem solving elements or to order information and make predictions. That is the reason I chose this task. "

lntrapersonal

'The intrapersonal assignment was something of a challenge to me

《Multiple Intelligences in Teacher Training》