The Lasting Impact of Multiple Intelligences

In 1983, in one of the most influential books in a peerlessly influential career, Howard Gardner upended popularly accepted notions of how children think and learn. He proposed, in Frames of Mind, that there was not just a single intelligence that could be measured by one IQ test, but multiple intelligences — many ways of learning and knowing.

With his best-known work, Howard Gardner shifted the paradigm and ushered in an era of personalized learning.

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The notion of multiple intelligences — and Gardner’s follow-up ideas about teaching individual students in the ways they can best learn, and teaching important concepts in multiple ways, for many access points — shifted the paradigm, ushering in an era of personalized learning whose promise is still being explored.

Gardner never rested at multiple intelligences. In an award-winning career — which has included MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, the University of Louisville’s Grawemeyer Award in Education, and innumerable honorary degrees — he’s focused on ethical development, citizenship (including digital citizenship), professionalism, and the value of college and the liberal arts. He may have retired from teaching in 2019, but his work continues. – Video directed by Jill Anderson, produced by Elio Pajares