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MI: Abilities, or Talents, not Intelligences

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At the end of December 2015, a Washington Post article written in 2013 on Multiple Intelligences (MI) by  Howard Gardner resurfaced and received a lot of attention on social media. In the article, Gardner clarified his position Multiple Intelligences vs Learning Styles.  The article dates from 2013 and there is a good response to it and an interesting discussion of MI in the book, Urban Myths about Learning & Education , that I've been reading recently.   It starts by recognising the value that MI has offered teachers and students: "Teachers who follow this theory have done much valuable work, because they recognize the differences in people. We would not dream of criticizing the value of this work, but the foundations on which it is based do seem to be rather shaky." The authors go on to quote a cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia, who believes the problem with MI has partly been because Gardner referred to them as 'intelligences' wh