How to Appeal to the Multiple Intelligences of Your Adult Learners

The task of educating and training adults can be both exhilarating and exhausting. When things go well, you secretly proclaim yourself Instructor of the Universe. But when learners return your thought-provoking questions with blank stares, you sometimes consider throwing in the teaching towel for good.

Fortunately for adult educators and trainers, there’s hope and help in learning theory. Enter Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University and father of the theory of multiple intelligences. According to Gardner, each person possesses varying degrees of several intelligences. Art aptitude, musical talents, communication skills, reasoning abilities, and knacks for hands-on activities are all accounted for in this theory. Plainly explained, we’re all smart in different ways. By putting theory to action, adult educators and on-the-job trainers can guide every learner toward success.

The Eight Intelligences

While the number of intelligences is a subject of hot debate, Gardner says there are at least eight. They are:

• Linguistic intelligence: This intelligence refers to one’s ability not only to read and write, but to play with words through jokes and riddles, solve word puzzles, and craft creative raps and rhymes. Journalists, poets, and your crossword-loving aunt clearly earn high marks in this realm.
• Logical-mathematical intelligence: A logically-mathematically talented soul has the ability to recognize patterns, approach math problems in a systematic fashion, and reason through complex logic systems. Think chemists, actuaries, engineers, and financial analysts here.
• Musical Intelligence: One’s ability to compose music, sing well, or bang out melodic tunes on a piano is more than a talent – it’s a demonstration of musical intelligence. Clearly, musicians, singers, and composers are well gifted here, but so, too, are dancers, studio engineers, and others with a sharp sense for rhythm and sound.
• Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence: This intelligence is marked by an aptitude for hands-on projects and the ability to control body movements. Surgeons, actors, soccer players, and mechanics are highly intelligent in this arena.
• Visual-spatial intelligence: Creating mental images and visualizing final products are demonstrations of this intelligence. Graphic artists, sculptors, photographers, architects, and fashion designers are visual-spatial smarty-pants.
• Interpersonal Intelligence: Understanding and responding to an individual’s needs, communicating appropriately, and working well with others are all examples of this social intelligence. Teachers, politicians, social workers, sales associates, and community leaders need interpersonal strengths to do their jobs well.
• Intrapersonal Intelligence: To know thyself is the foundation for Gardner’s seventh intelligence. Being able to think critically about oneself, self-analyze one’s own actions and behaviors, and be in touch with one’s own feelings are all critical elements of intrapersonal intelligence. Philosophers, counselors, and writers often allow this strength to guide their work.
• Naturalistic Intelligence: The ability to identify and classify plants, minerals, animals, and even cultural artifacts depends on one’s naturalistic know-how. Paleontologists, botanists, and your bird-watching neighbor all enjoy this natural ability.

According to Gardner, individuals possess each of these intelligences, though they may be stronger in some areas than in others. To provide the most effective instruction, educators and trainers should appeal to as many of these intelligences as possible.

Why Incorporate Multiple Intelligences Into Teaching and Training

New classroom or training experiences can provoke feelings of anxiety in older learners. These jitters often stem from a history of failure in traditional schools or programs. Many of these adults associate learning with their weaknesses.

Applying multiple intelligence theory offers all adults an opportunity to thrive in class and in the workplace. Imagine a GED student who excels in language arts activities, but struggles with learning the multiplication table. When presented as a random set of numbers, that student grows frustrated. Now picture that same student learning number facts by putting math to poetry and rhyme. Let’s try another example. Visualize a trainee who never seems to understand your company’s customer service mission, no matter how many times you run the standard PowerPoint presentation. Consider how that student will thrive when you build upon his interpersonal skills through role-plays. Capitalizing on an individual’s strengths invites learners to succeed where they may have otherwise failed. Here’s some more good news: research shows that tapping into adult learners’ strengths also boosts morale, interest, and engagement in a subject. Translation: Higher retention rates and less snoring in the back of the room.

How To Integrate Multiple Intelligence Theory Into Teaching and Training

Incorporating MI theory into your teaching and training of adults does not necessarily require a complete restructuring of your program. Allow the following ideas and suggestions to guide your own instruction.

• Use role-plays and simulations to re-enact historical moments, generate literary discussions, practice call center operations, or study workplace emergency protocol. Such activities will appeal to learners with interpersonal and bodily-kinesthetic strengths.
• Step away from the podium and let your learners do the talking. Invite students to work in small teams to think through algebraic word problems, approach a scientific experiment, propose a solution to budgetary problems, or create a sample purchase order for a company. These strategies will appeal to your socially-skilled learners, as well as those with strong logical-mathematical skills.
• Allow one’s inner Michelangelo to sculpt the learning process. Make use of a learner’s visual-spatial strengths in lessons and workshops. Learners can draw or paint their interpretation of a passage in literature, create visual images to capture the meaning of a math word problem, sketch the layout of a building to aid memory, or design a pictorial manual for business processes.
• Get creative with language and music. The thought of memorizing the table of elements may seem daunting to an adult student, but this task may appear more doable when presented through a clever, but age-appropriate poem or song. This technique can be helpful when learners are confronted with committing long lists to memory. Make up your own or invite your learners to write their own lyrics.
• Move beyond papers and pencils. Incorporate music, videos, art supplies, notebooks, digital cameras, age-appropriate math manipulatives, charts, graphs, 3-D models, journals, multimedia projects, games, photographs, maps, computers, and other creative tools in your teaching and training.
• Provide opportunities for whole group instruction, individual work, team activities, and partner projects. While some people may perceive learning as a sacredly solo task, others crave peer interaction.

Incorporating learning theories into your teaching can revolutionize your classroom. Adult learners will find a new world opened to them when their emotional needs are met and intellectual strengths are realized.