SIGNIFICANCE OF MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCE
AMONG CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
By
Saradha Priyadarshini, S.
Kattoor, Mettupalayam
TamilNadu, India.
“All students can learn and succeed, but
Not all on the same day in the same way”
-William G. Spady
Children’s ways of learning are as different as the colors
of the rainbow. Some grasp information best by reading, while others
learn better through listening or discovering concepts through hands on
experience. Traditionally, the concern of teachers and educators was on
assessing what children learn instead of focusing how they learn which
gives the child a comprehensive approach to teaching and learning. A
learning style diagnosis is the key to an understanding of student
learning.
Educational system today aims to design a creative and
effective interdisciplinary approach to teaching, learning, and
assessment taking into account the intellectual gifts of each student
(Diaz-Lefebvre and Finnegan, 1997). Learning takes place best when it
can be individualized, meeting the particular needs and interests of
each student. It is important to know what helps students learn and then
adjust teaching strategies to enhance the method of instruction.
Students can learn from a combination of modalities, hands-on
activities, oral and visual instruction and a combination of these
methods (Perkins, 2001).
In 1983, Howard Gardner, a noted Harvard psychologist and
educator, in his book “Frames of Mind” theorized that there are multiple
intelligences that dictate how children process and understand
information. According to Him, all individuals possess, exhibit and
perceive the world in eight different and equally important but in a
varying amount and combine and use them in idiosyncratic ways. Students
also will come into the classroom with different sets of developed
intelligences. These sets determine how easy or difficult it is for a
child to process information when it is presented in a particular manner
commonly referred to as a learning style.
Gardner’s Theory has offered educators a comprehensive
framework within which fundamentally different solutions can be
implemented. A tenet of Multiple Intelligence Theory is that people
learn, represent, and utilize knowledge in many different ways. These
differences challenge an educational system which assumes that everyone
can learn the same materials in the same way and that a uniform,
universal measure suffices to test student learning.
Educators need to assess their students’ learning needs in
ways which will provide a clear picture of the strengths and weaknesses.
Since all children do not learn in the same way, they cannot be assessed
in the same way. Therefore, it is important that an educator creates an
“intelligence profile” for each student. Knowing how each student learns
will allow the teacher to properly assess the child’s progress (Lazear,
1992). This individualized evaluation practice will allow a teacher to
make more informed decisions on what to teach and how to present the
required information.
Gardner’s theory also has several implications for
teachers in terms of classroom instruction. It implies that educators
should recognize and teach to a broader range of talents and skills
present in young children. A second implication is that teachers should
structure the presentation of material in a style that engages most or
all of the intelligences.
The influence that MI theory has on children with special
needs goes far beyond the development of new remedial strategies and
interventions. Though we all learn through our five senses of sight,
hearing, touch, smell and taste but the bulk of learning is through
sight and hearing. To learn well we must be able to harness these
faculties, especially that of sight for maximum learning capacity and
capability. The children with special needs might not have difference
pattern of development and it depends on the residual senses they
possess.
If MI theory is implemented on a large scale in both
regular and special education, it is likely to have some positive
effects. It provides more emphasis on the strengths and abilities of
children with disabilities, increases students self-esteem and helps to
promote success among a broader community of learners. MI theory makes
sense of their individual differences, their tolerance and
understanding. The MI theory increases the appreciation of those with
special needs; leading to their full integration into the general
classroom (Armstrong, 1994).
Every teacher and parent should assess their child’s
multiple intelligences to address their strengths and build upon their
weakness. Unless one is able to assess how the learning takes place in
different domains, and by different cognitive processes, even superior
curricular innovations are destined to remain unutilized. According to
Gardner, “the broad spectrum of student and perhaps the society as a
whole—would be better served if disciplines could be presented in a
number of ways and learning could be assessed through a variety of
means”.
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
S.Saradha
priyadarshini has completed B.Sc (Multi - category)., B.Ed (Visual
impairment)., M.Ed (Visual impairment)., (v integrated) course in
special Education at Avinashilingam University – Coimbatore. The author
has stepped as a Special Educator into an Autism
Center situated at Coimbatore,
Tamilnadu, India for the past 10
months. As a part of her M.Ed she has conducted a small research
(thesis) on Multiple intelligence for children with low vision. At
present she is doing her Post Graduation in Applied Psychology –
correspondence course at Bharathiar
University, Coimbatore.
Her interest is in collecting books regarding the field, and preparing
articles.
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