Intelligence, Instruction, and Assessment

Theory Into Practice

Robert J. Sternberg, Wendy M. Williams, Robert J. Sternberg, Wendy M. Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 1998
• ISBN:
  9781135686574
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

Intelligence, Instruction, and Assessment shows how modern theories of intelligence can be directly applied by educators to the teaching of subject matter, regardless of the age of the students or the content being taught. It is intended primarily for teachers at all levels--elementary, secondary, tertiary--who want to apply in their classrooms what we know about intelligence. The focus is not on modifying students' intelligence, per se, but on increasing their disciplinary knowledge and understanding. Hence, this book will help teachers learn how they can teach more effectively what they are already teaching. The assumption is that what teachers care most about is how they can improve upon what they are already doing, and how they can learn what they need to do in order to be more effective in their work. The contributors are well known for their work on intelligence and education. Each chapter includes an accessible explanation of the author's theory of intelligence, and discusses the implications of that theory both for instruction and for assessment. The book is international in scope, reflecting both American and European perspectives. Anyone interested in knowing how modern theories of intelligence can be applied to education will want to read this book--particularly teachers and other education specialists, as well as developmental psychologists, cognitive psychologists, and philosophers with an interest in applying psychological theory to classroom practice. It will serve well as a text for courses on educational psychology, intelligence, cognition and instruction, and foundations of teaching.

CHAPTER 1

Applying the Triarchic Theory of Human Intelligence in the Classroom

Robert J. Sternberg

Yale University

A CASE STUDY

When Bob was taught French in high school, his main job was to memorize lists of French vocabulary words, learn grammatical rules, and mimic and memorize phrases and their variants. The key to success in his courses was memorization, but he was not a good memorizer, in French or in any other kinds of courses. He was a decent student in French, but definitely nothing special.

When Bob went to France, his reward for 3 years of study was minimal: He could hardly speak at all, and his understanding of what people were saying to him was virtually nonexistent. His teachers were generally unimpressed with his performance in French, and one even commented to him that it was obvious, based on the mistakes he was making, that he did not have much ability to learn foreign languages. He took the comment seriously, and never again studied foreign language in school.

Bob would have been content never again to learn a foreign language, but circumstances dictated otherwise. As an adult, he was asked to develop a program to be used with schoolchildren in Venezuela. Because the program was to be taught in Spanish by Spanish-speaking teachers to Spanish-speaking children, Bob realized, with displeasure, that he would need to learn some Spanish.

He started learning Spanish, but the way he was taught Spanish was entirely different from the way he had been taught French. All of the instruction was in Spanish, and he was totally immersed in the language. He was discouraged from memorizing anything. Rather, he was to learn Spanish by using it. The instruction emphasized practical rather than memory learning. To his surprise, Bob learned Spanish quickly and well, and within a couple of years was able to go to various Latino countries and communicate effectively with people from them. Today, he speaks Spanish fluently and continues to travel to such countries. His French continues to be halting.

Bob’s French performance was so middling that both Bob and his teachers concluded that Bob did not have much ability to learn foreign languages. In contrast, Bob’s Spanish performance was so strong, that Bob was able to reassess his foreign-language abilities totally, and to realize that what he lacked was not the ability to learn foreign languages, but the ability to learn them via memorization.

HOW WE MAKE FALSE INFERENCES ABOUT INTELLIGENCE

Millions of students in all disciplines and at all levels are confronting today exactly the same problem that Bob confronted earlier in his life. They are being taught by methods that fit poorly with their pattern of abilities. As a result, they are not learning or they learn at minimal levels. At the same time, they and their teachers are concluding that they lack vital learning abilities. In fact, many of them have impressive learning abilities but not the kind that are used in the methods of teaching to which they are exposed. As a result, they never reach the high levels of learning that are possible for them.

This claim is not based on only a single case (Bob’s—my own!), nor is its validity confined to case-study research. Probably, many individuals could give their own examples of how, under one method of instruction, they succeeded, whereas under another method of instruction, they failed. Is there scientific evidence supporting these observations? There is.

We did a 5-year study in which we developed a high school psychology course. We recruited students from all across the United States and some from abroad on the basis of their patterns of abilities as specified by what I call the triarchic theory of human intelligence, according to which intelligence is composed of three main kinds of abilities (Sternberg, 1985, 1988, 1996).

1. Analytical abilities, the abilities used to analyze, judge, evaluate, compare or contrast

2. Creative abilities, the abilities used to create, invent, discover, imagine, or suppose

3. Practical abilities, the abilities used to apply, put into practice, implement, or use.

Some students were high in analytical abilities, others in creative abilities, and still others in practical abilities. We found that students who were taught more of the time in a manner that fit their pattern of abilities outperformed students who were taught only minimally or not at all in a manner that fit their pattern of abilities (Sternberg, 1997; Sternberg, Ferrari, Clinkenbeard, & Grigorenko, 1996). In other words, students can improve their performance if taught in a way that is appropriate for them. Much of the teaching done in classrooms reaches only students whose strength is in learning by memory. Students with other kinds of strengths—analytical, creative, or practical, for example—may be taught in a way that almost never matches their pattern of abilities. They should be taught in a way that matches all of these patterns of abilities, however (Sternberg & Spear-Swerling, 1996).

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES

Should we teach to strengths rather than weaknesses? No. We should teach both to strengths and weaknesses. Students need to learn what their strengths and weaknesses are and then to learn to make the most of their strengths at the same time that they learn to correct their weaknesses. Eventually, they will not only learn to correct weaknesses but also to compensate for them.

In practical terms, the implication of this view is that instruction need not be individualized across ability patterns, but rather it can be more or less uniform across these patterns. All students should be taught in a way that enables them to use memory abilities as well as analytical, creative, and practical abilities, so they can both capitalize on their strengths and correct their weaknesses.

INTEGRATION OF MODES OF LEARNING AND THINKING

Good teaching enables students to capitalize on strengths and to correct weaknesses, but it does not typically do so through activities that isolate these strengths and weaknesses from each other. In everyday life, we rarely encounter activities that are purely analytical, creative, or practical. And for certain, we do not encounter many activities that require us to memorize. How many times does someone graduate from school sit down to memorize anything? Good teaching involves activities that may draw more or less on any particular kind of skill, but ultimately, that involve the same kinds of complex integration that we need to learn in order to survive.

It is useful for teachers to choose activities that particularly emphasize certain skills over others, because it is easy to fall into the trap of just assuming that any one activity involves some of each of analytical, creative, and practical thinking. In fact, many activities require little or none of these kinds of thinking. What are examples of such activities?

TEACHING FOR MEMORY, AND FOR ANALYTICAL, CREATIVE, AND PRACTICAL THINKING

The following are examples of activities at both the primary and secondary levels that emphasize memory as well as analytical, creative, and practical thinking. The activities are organized by subject matter areas, because most teachers either teach a single subject matter area or mult...