Teaching and many ways to learn

In this blog we have written many good tips for teachers. It is easy to see that our activities are very various. But is it relevant? Can we found one teaching style for everyone or should we try to find different teaching methods?

Howard Gardener (1943) is an american neurologist who made a theory of multiple intelligences. He figured out that after brain damage his patients often lost some of their abilities; one patient could not speak anymore but she was still able to make music. Gardener made a hypothes of people having multiple intelligences in distinct parts of their brain. He made a list of different kind of intelligences: musical-rhythmic,visual-spatial, verbal-linguistic, existential, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic.

Scientists are not sure if there is more or less than 8 different kind of intelligences, how these abilities are working etc. But even if Gardeners theory have been critisezed as teachers we can found some very interesting ideas for bringing to a classroom. And for sure our classrooms won't be only full of different kind of intelligences... it will be also full of personalities. Some of students have a great attitude of learning, some of them not have it yet, some of them get bored very easly and some of them are scared of new things. Some of them are more indepentend than others. Some learners have supporting family, some of them do not have. Some students trust themself and some of them believe that they are unable to do things. We have uncountless number of variouses.

This situation can be very challenging to a teacher. There is possibilities that only one kind of teaching-method will support only one kind of learners. Also it is possible that students get tired of doing the same thing all the time and even good method does not work anymore. That is the most important reason to us to learn about differences. A flexible, versatile teaching can give possibilities to students to learn and also try new methods of learning. And by this we do not mean that we only need to do radical assignments and forget a"traditional" teaching. We need to remember that some students might found it the most useful way to learn. Knowing students and be open-minded to many ways to learn... that might be a key for working with a heterogeneous classroom.