Successful intelligence in the classroom

(f) Predict changes that are likely to occur in the vocabulary or grammar of spoken Spanish in the border areas of the Rio Grande over the next 100 years as a result of continuous interactions between Spanish and English speakers. (Linguistics)

Teaching practically

Teaching practically means encouraging students to (a) apply, (b) use, (c) put into practice, (d) implement, (e) employ, and (f) render practical what they know. Such teaching must relate to the real practical needs of the students, not just to what would be practical for other individuals (Sternberg et al., 2000). Consider some examples:

(a) Apply the formula for computing compound interest to a problem people are likely to face when planning for retirement. (Economics, Math)

(b) Use your knowledge of German to greet a new acquaintance in Berlin. (German)

(c) Put into practice what you have learned from teamwork in football to make a classroom team project succeed. (Athletics)

(d) Implement a business plan you have written in a simulated business environment. (Business)

(e) Employ the formula for distance, rate, and time to compute a distance. (Math)

(f) Render practical a proposed design for a new building that will not work in the aesthetic context of the surrounding buildings, all of which are at least 100 years old. (Architecture)

It might seem as though teaching for successful intelligence would require much more classroom time per topic than would teaching in more conventional ways. This is not the case, however. The idea is not to teach each topic three times in three ways. Rather, it is to alternate teaching styles so that some of the time one teaches in a way more geared toward analytical thinking, other times in a way more geared to creative thinking, and still other times in a way more geared to practical thinking. The total time spent in teaching given material is the same as in any other way of teaching the material.

Because teaching for successful intelligence reaches more students' patterns of abilities, the students are more likely to be intrinsically motivated to succeed in their work. Some teachers may be reluctant to do this kind of balanced teaching, because they see their own strengths as being primarily in one of the ways of thinking, such as analytical. But teaching only to one's own strengths deprives students with different patterns of abilities valuable opportunities to learn.

Clearly, it is possible to implement teaching for successful intelligence in a wide variety of academic contexts. But there are potential problems with any new methodology. How do these methods work in practice?

Some Supporting Research

We have sought to test the theory of successful intelligence in the classroom. Our studies extend down to grade 4, and although we believe the methods would apply with younger children, we have not systematically tested their efficacy for them. In a first set of studies, we explored the question of whether conventional education in school systematically discriminates against children with creative and practical strengths (Sternberg & Clinkenbeard, 1995; Sternberg, Ferrari, Clinkenbeard, & Grigorenko, 1996; Sternberg, Grigorenko, Ferrari, & Clinkenbeard, 1999). Motivating this work was the belief that the systems in most schools strongly tend to favor children with strengths in memory and analytical abilities. However, schools can be unbalanced in other areas as well. One school we visited in Russia in 2000 placed a heavy emphasis on the development of creative abilities--much more so than on the development of analytical and practical abilities. While on this trip, we were told of another school--catering to the children of Russian businessman--that strongly emphasized practical abilities. The children who were not practically oriented were told that, eventually, they would be working for their classmates who were.