The following post is from Silja Kallenbach, please read on ~ Jackie
Taylor

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Silja Kallenbach [mailto:silja_kallenbach at worlded.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 10:41 AM
To: professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov
Subject: Re: [ProfessionalDevelopment 1958] Debunking in
ProfessionalDevelopment

 

Hello Tom and Colleagues,

MI theory is exactly what it claims to be: a theory about intelligences
that posits that intelligence is a pluralistic rather that a unitary
trait; that there are many ways to be intelligent; that one way is not
better than another; that these intelligences develop at different
rates; that everyone, who is not brain damaged, has at least 8
intelligences in varying degrees; that intelligences are not the same as
learning styles.  Testing intelligences in antithetical to MI theory. 

 

Rather, inviting people to do self-reflection in a very subjective way,
that may change from time to time, is more in the spirit of this
theoretical framework.  In this framework an intelligence IS the same as
talent.    

 

MI theory does have something to offer to K-12 and adult educators and
learners, but not to the exclusion of other teaching strategies.  It
turns out that for adult learners, learning about a different way to
think about intelligence can be liberating and affirming *in ways that
actually improve their self-efficacy with academic tasks.*   Devoting
some time to simply talking about the concept of intelligence is not a
bad use of class time unless, of course you are delivering the message
that people need to meet your narrow definition of intelligence.
Feeling good about yourself as a learner has value because it
predisposes people to tackle the learning that does not come easy.
Certainly, Bandura's research on self-efficacy supports that.

 

MI theory was a useful tool for lesson planning in the experience of the
10 teachers who did teacher research over 18 months on what MI theory
has to offer to ESOL, ABE, GED instruction and career counseling as part
of the Adult Multiple Intelligences Study (AMI), and with whom I had the
pleasure to work. (Wendy Quinones was one of them.) In our experience,
MI theory inspires and guided the teachers' lesson planning in positive
ways that did translate into improved attendance, GED test scores,
reading comprehension, even guidance counseling.  Most fundamentally, it
pushed the practitioners to intentionally find out about students'
talents and look for ways to bridge those talents to the learning
objectives.  For example, one teacher, who already practiced
multi-sensory teaching of reading, had an eye-opening experience of how
much more engaged her students were in reading when her lessons took
into consideration her students' talents an interests and gave them
options for how to demonstrate their comprehension.  As a result, she
observed improved reading comprehension.  

 

We did not set out to measure learning gains across the board so the AMI
Study does not meet the gold standard of evidence-based research but I
would claim it meets the definition of evidence-based education put
forth by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education
Sciences: "the integration of professional wisdom with the best
available empirical evidence in making decisions about how to deliver
instruction."

 

The experiences and findings of most of the AMI teacher researchers are
captured in free NCSALL's publication, MI in Practice at
http://www.ncsall.net/?id=26, as is our (very qualitative) research
report, Open to Interpretation. The lessons the AMI teachers developed
were published in a sourcebook available through Teachers College Press.

 

If you are only interested in experimental research then don't waste
your time reading our reports and books. If you are interested in
learning about how ten ABE, GED and ESOL teachers used MI theory then I
think the AMI study, and the lessons that grew out of it, are useful and
instructive.  

 

As for the definition of the word "debunk", who cares?

Silja

AMI Study Co-Director

 

 

*********************************************

Silja Kallenbach, Director

New England Literacy Resource Center

World Education

44 Farnsworth Street

Boston, MA 02210

tel. 617-482-9485 x 3826

fax. 617-482-0617

skallenbach at worlded.org

www.nelrc.org

 

Get free resources about ABE/ESOL-to-college transitions at
www.collegetransition.org Teach critical thinking  with The Change
Agent, a social justice publication for the adult education community,
available at www.nelrc.org/changeagent

 

 

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