


What does this look like? Let’s say you have a high level of visual intelligence and prefer to learn with graphs. Everyone is different and everyone is unique. No one group has a claim over certain intelligences or will naturally lack other intelligences. Through his work, he discovered that everyone has a unique combination of these intelligences. The curriculum said that some groups had high levels of intelligences and low levels of others. In 1993, experts in the country created a curriculum that assigned different intelligences to different racial and ethnic groups. In Gardner’s Ted Talk, he describes a misuse of his Theory of Multiple Intelligences in Australia. These “computers,” or intelligences, shape the way that we learn new information or even gravitate toward different subjects. The computers don’t all work equally – one may take longer to load than another – but they’re all there. Rather than thinking of our brain like one single “computer,” Gardner’s theory challenges people to think of the brain as multiple computers with multiple abilities. Gardner’s research and discoveries led him to create the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. A person may do very poorly on a general intelligence test, but that doesn’t mean they are incapable of learning. He realized that one form of wit, or one standard for intelligence, simply doesn’t cover all of the abilities that we have as people. The psychologist thought that all you needed was “ wit and grit” to succeed (intelligence and perseverance.) But then he started working with children of different ages and backgrounds, watching them perform many different tasks. A person could sit down with a piece of paper, read questions, answer them, and gauge how smart they were. Before the 1980s, people mostly believed there was one measure of intelligence. This perspective on intelligences and learning styles hasn’t been around for a long time. About the Seven Different Learning Styles Understanding these differences can help you as a student, teacher, parent, or supervisor as you connect with people and help everyone learn information in the way that works best with their intelligence. Also known as different intelligences, these different approaches to learning show just how different we all are. Does that make you smarter than your classmate? Is your roommate smarter than you? No! Different learning styles are just that – a different way to learn new information.
