ABSTRACT
The focus of research swung back to the qualities of learners themselves with Gardner’s work on multiple intelligences (1993). Gardner says there are eight different ways, or channels, to integrate new information. For an individual, the channel that works the best depends on what Gardner calls domains of intelligence. These domains have little to do with each other. They include the linguistic, the logico-mathematical, the musical, the spatial, the bodily-kinesthetic, the interpersonal, the intrapersonal, and the naturalistic. An individual will have a specific mixture of aptitudes divided among all of these different intelligences. Some may have a disproportionate leaning toward the linguistic or the logico-mathematical. Others may lean toward the bodily-kinesthetic or the interpersonal. All of these learners are likely to turn up in our classrooms. That is a problem, says Gardner, because our classroom learning environments favor the linguistic over all other domains. Exceptions to this are mathematics, physical education, music and art studio courses, and experiential education in tutoring, peer counseling, and Outward Bound. It is not that we dismiss or ignore these alternative channels for learning. Rather, we disproportionately privilege the linguistic over all others.
