Howard Gardner Biography

Howard Gardner was born on July 11, 1943 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. His parents were refugees from the period of the Nazis, in Germany. As a child he loved music, he later became a great pianist. As a young man he enrolled at Harvard University. Gardner started to study other careers but ended getting inspired by the works of Jean Piaget to study developmental psychology.

He is married to Ellen Winner, a developmental psychologist who teaches at Boston College, and they have four children together He spent some time working with two different types of groups, normal and gifted children and brain-damaged adults, Gardner began developing a theory designed to synthesize his research and observations. In 1983, he wrote Frames of Mind which outlined his theory of multiple intelligences. Gardner believed that people had multiple different ways of thinking and learning.

He has since identified and described eight different kinds of intelligence which are: Visual-spatial intelligence Gardner also identifies spatial ability as one which lasts longest into old age, Linguistic-verbal intelligence which Gardner takes account of the importance of language in thought, and also in terms of music , Mathematical intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence, Musical intelligence in which Gardner investigates neurological basis for the musical ability, Interpersonal intelligence is related to the ways in which we understand and respond to other people, Intrapersonal intelligence is mostly about our cognitive ability to understand ourselves as human beings and Naturalistic intelligence has to do with an individual’s ability to perceive patterns in nature and to classify them. He has also believed that there might have been another possible addition of a ninth type which he refers to as “existential intelligence. Gardner’s theory has had one of the greatest impact in education In 1986 he started to teach at Harvard Graduate School of Education and began his role at Project Zero, which is a research group that focuses in human cognition with a special focus on the arts and was created by by the philosopher Nelson Goodman with the aim of improving learning in the Arts through research But Over this period Project Zero expanded from its original arts learning base to include research into learning across all types of things. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences has not been accepted within academic psychology. However, it has met with a strongly positive response from many educators. After all, Gardner has been a great psychologist and his theory has inspired many educators, whether it hasn’t or has been accepted in psychology education.