Successful intelligence in the classroom

Thus the results of three sets of studies suggest that the theory of successful intelligence is valid as a whole. Further, the results suggest that the theory can make a difference not only in laboratory tests, but in school classrooms and even the everyday life of adults as well.

Why Teaching for Successful Intelligence Works

Why should teaching for successful intelligence improve performance relative to standard (or critical-thinking) instruction, even when performance is assessed for straightforward memory-based recall? There are at least four reasons. First, teaching for successful intelligence encourages deeper and more elaborated encoding of material than does traditional teaching, so students learn the material in a way that enhances probability of retrieval at test time. Second, teaching for successful intelligence encourages more diverse forms of encoding material, so there are more retrieval paths to the material and greater likelihood of recall at test time. Third, teaching for successful intelligence enables students to capitalize on strengths and to correct or compensate for weaknesses. Fourth, teaching for successful intelligence is more motivating to both teachers and students, so teachers are likely to teach more effectively and students are likely to learn more. Ideally, of course, exams should not assess only static memory learning.

Conclusion

Teachers may wish to consider the option of teaching for successful intelligence. In doing so, they will improve their teaching, improve student learning, and most importantly, modify in a constructive way the entire teaching-learning process. Data collected with thousands of students shows that teaching for successful intelligence works for many students, in many subject-matter areas, at many grade levels. Of course, this form of teaching is not a panacea for the problems of schools, and it most likely will not work for everyone--whether student or teacher. But in our research we have found that the majority of students and teachers benefit from the methods described in this article.

Teaching for successful intelligence obviously relates to other kinds of teaching that emphasize thinking. One example is Bloom's taxonomy, which specifies a set of skills that are arrayed from those at the lowest level of cognition to the highest level of cognition. There are probably three key differences between the present theory and the taxonomy. The first is that the theory of successful intelligence does not array thinking skills hierarchically, but rather, interactively. The second is that there is a more nearly equal balance among analytical, creative, and practical skills than in Bloom's taxonomy. And the third is that the methods of teaching described here are based on a psychological theory rather than a descriptive list of thinking skills.

A second example is Gardner's (1983) theory of multiple intelligences. This theory specifies a number of distinct intelligences, such as linguistic and musical, that can serve as bases for teaching thinking. The present theory is complementary to Gardner's in the sense that any of Gardner's domains, such as the linguistic, can employ analytical, creative, or practical processes (e.g., analyzing a story, writing a story, writing a persuasive essay). But there are differences. One is that the theory of successful intelligence has been subject to many controlled studies seeking empirically to validate it, while Gardner's theory has not. A second difference is that the theory of successful intelligence is more process-oriented: Gardner's theory is more content-oriented. And a third difference is that not all of Gardner's theories fall under the purview of the theory of successful intelligence, such as the candidate "existential intelligence."