Biography: Howard Gardner | Psychologist and American educator who formulated and developed the theory of multiple intelligences.

(Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1943) Psychologist and American educator who formulated and developed the theory of multiple intelligences. Son of a German family which emigrated to the United States to escape from the nazi regime, studied at Harvard University, which earned a doctorate in social psychology in 1971, then starting a teaching career that would lead him to become part of the staff of the institution as Professor of cognition and education and Assistant Professor of psychology.

Howard Gardner

In 1970, a year before his PhD, he became co-director of Project Zero, a research group created in 1967 by the Superior education of Harvard School, whose object of study were the learning processes of children and adults. Howard Gardner research works, which would end up promoting significant changes in educational models, led him to the conclusion that intelligence is not limited only to the ability of solving abstract issues, as usually tends to be believed, but it is composed of several facets that interact with each other, although each of them adapts specifically to various situations dealing with the individual throughout their life.

In a first stage, Gardner and his team of Harvard distinguished seven types of intelligence, developed in different areas of the brain. Thus, the first of these, linguistica-verbal intelligence, is able to properly use the language; You can be seen in the children read and tell stories like that, and who learn other languages with ease. The second, called logical-mathematical intelligence, corresponds to the ability to handle numbers and logical relationships; children who solve arithmetic calculations with fluency have it so innate and you can be seen in adults who easily handle abstract concepts.

It is followed by the corporal-cinetica intelligence, which relates to the power to express feelings and ideas with your own body and facilitates the use of tools; You can be seen in people working with their hands and those who have skills for the sport or dance. Spatial intelligence is the ability to move in space, interpreting drawings and sketches or visualize volumes represented in two dimensions. Individuals capable of perceiving and expressing the rhythm, the timbre and tone of musical sounds have musical intelligence.

Develop the interpersonal intelligence people who communicate easily with others and express empathy for them, while intrapersonal intelligence, finally, facilitate introspection and the ability to leverage the self-knowledge, and allows you to express the feelings. This list was later added an eighth facet, the naturalist, which is the ability to connect with nature. According to Gardner, this potential was already characteristic of the first human beings, whose survival depended on the observation of the climate and the use of plants suitable for consumption. More recently, Gardner and his team considered the possibility of adding new strains to the previous one, as the spiritual or the digital payroll.

In the theoretical framework of contemporary psychology and pedagogy, Gardner proposals contained a new element: the thesis that intelligence natural, traditionally measured by the coefficient intellectual (CI), is not an identical substrate in all individuals. According to this approach, known in the academic areas such as multiple intelligences theory, intelligence is a singular biopsicologica, in whose formation coalesce diverse skills and capabilities that are not always developed its full potential because of the uniformity of the educational system, which does not pay enough attention to the differential features of the student. So Howard Gardner put it in his main work, structures of mind: the theory of multiple intelligences (1983).

Among the trials of the American researchers who have been translated to the Spanish, art education and human development (1994), multiple intelligences. The theory on practice (1995), history of the cognitive revolution (2002), creative minds. An anatomy of creativity (2002) and the five minds for the future (2005). In may, 2011 Howard Gardner was awarded the prize Prince of Asturias social science by having "revealed the various manifestations of the human intellect" and by the value of their research, "decisive for the evolution of the educational model".

Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas