Theories on Intelligences

When I looked at the theories on intelligences by Howard Gardner, Robert Stermberg and David Perkins, I saw many similarities, and yes a few differences. The one that I was drawn to in the very beginning was Stermberg. He seems to have a lot of the same ideas as Gardner, it just seems to be more easy to digest. Instead of breaking the intelligences up into eight categories as Gardner did, he only has three categories,
Practical intelligence,
Experiential intelligence
Componential intelligence
As I said earlier, I was first drawn to this idea, but then as I read further, it seemed to be less appealing. I was not able to put everything into his neat categories. What actually seemed simple to begin with became more and more complicated, so I took a second look at Gardner and Perkins.

After spending a little more time on all three, I find that I really like Howard Gardner’s idea that there are more than three intelligences.
· Bodily kinesthetic ie dancers
· Interpersonal (people who are good at dealing with public) sales, teachers, clinicians
· Intrapersonal (people with good insight into themselves)
· Linguistic (poets, communicators)
· Logical, mathematical
· Musical
· Naturalistic (the ability to understand other species
· Spatial (surgeons, sculptors)
I am still not completely sure that I agree with all eight, the one that I really have the most trouble with is Naturalistic, to me it seems like that might go with logical and mathematical, but I guess that is another post.

If we take a minute to look at the PBL lesson idea from chapter 3 that involved a group of students developing a news letter, I can see how students with all different intelligences could be actively involved in this project. Students with interpersonal intelligences would be the logical ones to interview people and sell ads. Linguistics and special students would probably editing and layout. The logical and mathematical students would probably be the ones who would be able to set up the data base with all the information on the mailing list. Students with Intrapersonal Intelligences would probably enjoy writing an editorial page. There are some that of the categories that don’t seem to fit, but the project could be adjusted with a different focus to make it more appealing to them.