Multiple Intelligence & The Expert Teacher

Building Teacher Quality

Distinguishing Expert Teachers from Novice and Experienced Teachers.
Reflections on a paper delivered by John Hattie at the Australian Council for Educational Research Annual Conference, University of Auckland, October 2003.

This brilliant paper delivered by John Hattie gives a detailed description of the attributes of an expert teacher. John Hattie stated that his search was driven for the purpose of developing appropriate professional development and to extol the teaching profession as truly having recognisable excellence which can be identified in defensible ways, and the basis for a renewed focus on the success of our teachers to make the difference. (Hattie, 2003) I have two inquiries with regard to the findings of this study;

1. as this paper was given to pre-eminent researchers and expert teachers in the field for comment, changes and input, would it be possible that the findings of this paper are the results of those experts and studying those experts would give us an understanding of the unique qualities needed to work with the 16 attributes of excellence; and

2. considering Dr Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligence, would it be possible to use this as a benchmark for all teachers given the nature of the 16 prototypic attributes of expertise,

Intellect and intelligence are two different things.

Intelligence is a natural expression of what you know, of what you live for and intellect is an imbibed concept. Intelligence is harmonious expression of your beliefs, your thoughts, your lifestyle, your nature. I can be an intellectual giant but not have intelligence. I can have intelligence yet be an absolute ignorant fool. So we have to learn to differentiate between intellect and intelligence. Intellect is something that deals with the process of knowing and intelligence deals with the process of expression. And these things have to be understood in relation to human nature. There is the theory which I call the SWAN principle and these are acronyms for Strength, Weakness, Ambition and Need. These are 4 things which are inherent in a human personality. We all have our strengths, we all have our weaknesses, we all have our ambitions and we all have our needs and we have to realise what our particular SWAN principle is. And we have to be very careful so that we don’t confuse our need with ambition, our ambition with our strength, our weakness with our need. There have to be a clear division in the recognition of personal strength, weakness, ambition and need. And once you are able to do that you should also be able to observe the personality of the person with whom you live. And that way when you begin to actually realise the principles that govern your personality you will find the attitude and the perception change. The change in attitude and the change in perception is the beginning of education in yoga. If you can recognise the strength and weakness of the child, if teachers can, they can be better teachers. They can encourage and support a child to grow and develop.

Paramahamsa Niranjanananda Saraswati (Speaker) (1996) The Integration of Yoga and Science in the 21st Century, World Yoga Convention [tape recording] New South Wales.

This distinction between intelligence and intellect leads me to wonder whether the pre-eminent researchers and expert teachers that gave comment, changes and input to Hattie’s paper have highly developed abilities in both their intellect and intelligence. As I do not believe that Hattie’s 16 prototypic attributes are a normal level of operating in society, I believe research into the above distinctions may give evidence as to why only a select few (considering the population of the world) live life at this higher level of operating. I would personally like to see more research go into the above distinctions, maybe it would carve a pathway for the biggest explosion in human creativity in the history of mankind.

The 16 prototypic attributes are:

A1 Expert teachers have deeper representations about teaching and learning.
A2 Expert teachers adopt a problem-solving stance to their work.
A3 Expert teachers can anticipate, plan, and improvise as required by the situation.
A4 Expert teachers are better decision-makers and can identify what decisions are important and which are less important decisions.
B5 Expert teachers are proficient at creating an optimal classroom climate for learning.
B6 Expert teachers have a multidimensionally complex perception of classroom climate for learning.
B7 Expert teachers are more context-dependent and have high situation cognition.
C8 Expert teachers are more adept at monitoring student problems and assessing their level of understanding and progress, and they provide much more relevant, useful feedback.
C9 Expert teachers are more adept at developing and testing hypotheses about learning difficulties or instructional strategies.
C10 Expert teachers are more automatic.
D11 Expert teachers have high respect for students.
D12 Expert teachers are passionate about teaching and learning.
E13 Expert teachers engage students in learning and develop in their students’ self-regulation, involvement in mastery learning, enhanced self-efficacy, and self-esteem as learners.
E14 Expert teachers provide appropriate challenging tasks and goals for students.
E15 Expert teachers have positive influences on students’ achievement.
E16 Expert teachers enhance surface and deep learning.

Personally, I believe Hattie’s findings are an excellent place to stand for the future of teaching and indeed worthy of pursuit, however, given the complex nature of human beings I am unsure whether these attributes are achievable to all people who want to be teachers.

Multiple Intelligences

Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University, developed the theory of multiple intelligences. Dr. Gardner proposes eight different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults. These intelligences are:

Linguistic intelligence ("word smart"):
Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart")
Spatial intelligence ("picture smart")
Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")
Musical intelligence ("music smart")
Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart")
Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")
Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")

Dr. Gardner says that our schools and culture focus most of their attention on linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence. We esteem the highly articulate or logical people of our culture. However, Dr. Gardner says that we should also place equal attention on individuals who show gifts in the other intelligences: the artists, architects, musicians, naturalists, designers, dancers, therapists, entrepreneurs, and others who enrich the world in which we live. Armstrong, T. Dr (1998-2000) Multiple Intelligences. Retrieved October 15, 2006, from http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/multiple_intelligences.htm

Critical Reflection

Hattie states that findings were sent to pre-eminent researchers and to expert teachers in the field for comment, changes and input (Hattie & Jaeger, in review). It would be interesting to know what the intelligences of the pre-eminent researchers and expert teachers are according to the Gardner model. If the intelligences of these people were heavily weighted to one or two particular intelligences would that make Hattie’s findings biased? Considering these people were already expert teachers, if we looked closer at the expert teachers would we find that they share a particular nature that is the cause of their expertise and which would not/or would be very difficult to transfer to another with a totally different intelligence? Let us note that researchers share a particular intelligence that would be quite different to a musical intelligence. Of course some of Hattie’s 16 prototypic attributes of expertise are shared by all intelligences, for example D11, D12 & E15. However, attributes such as A3, A4, B5, B6, B7, C8, C9, C10 & E13 are quite complex Interpersonal and Intrapersonal qualities that may not be so easy to grasp for a Logical-mathematical intelligence. I would personally like to see more research done on the qualities of expert teachers and what is it in their personality that allows them to continually function at that level, and then re-evaluate the findings of this paper. I believe that with this perspective in mind appropriate professional development would account for the diversity of all individuals wishing to become teachers and bring out the expert in everyone.