Mulitple Intelligence: Chapter 1

The first chapter of Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom by Thomas Armstrong provides the philosophy of Howard Gardner.  Howard Gardner feels “that our culture had defined intelligence too narrowly”(5).  He feels that the intelligence has more to “do with the capacity for solving problems and fashioning products in a context rich and naturalistic setting”(6).  The mutiliple intelligences that they explained in this chapter are:

•  Linguistic: the capacity to use words effectively.
•  Logical-Mathematical: the capacity to use numbers effectively.
•  Spatial:  the ability to perceive the visual-spatial world accurately.
• Bodily-Kinesthetic: expertise in using ones whole body to express ideas and feelings.
• Musical: the capacity to perceive, express, discriminate and transform musical forms.
• Interpersonal: the ability to perceive and make distinctions in the moods, intentions, motivations, and feelings for other people. 
•  Intrapersonal: Self-knowledge and the ability to act adaptively in the basis of the knowledge.
•  Naturalist: Expertise in the recognition and the classification of the numerous species-the flora and fauna-of an individual’s environment.

The theory basis for MI theory involves a series of 8 factors in which some form of expression is considered to be an intelligence rather than a talent. 

The chapter offers different kinds of exceptions and reasons for some people being savant and prodigies in their desired intelligence at different points in their lives. People such as Mozart, Blaise Pascal, Karl Freidrich and Toni Morrison were prodigies in their own intelligences. The chapter also goes on to explain how many people may have all 8 intelligences but different environmental factors could play a big part in developing of those.  Learning styles were also mentioned in the later part of the chapter, including ideas that they style designated a general approach that an individual can apply equally to every conceivable content.