Common Core Standards and the Multiple Intelligences

Common Core Standards and the Multiple Intelligences:

Implications of a Rigorous Curriculum

for Teachers, Arts-Technical Educators and Schools

Branton Shearer 7-5-13

Abstract

This report examines relationships among Common Core State Standards and the Multiple Intelligences and Core Art Standards. Numerous areas of agreement are found among Linguistic, Logical-mathematical and Intrapersonal intelligences and Common Core academic standards. Likewise, a number of intersections are observed among Arts Standards and CCSS English Language Arts and Math Practices. Three types of curricular approaches are described that employ personalized, whole brain instruction that will develop students’ Logical thinking and Linguistic skills to meet Common Core Standards.

Brief Executive Summary

There is a great stirring in the land as schools delve into the meaning and implications of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The purpose of CCSS is to establish one “yardstick” by which all schools may be held accountable for providing a rigorous, high quality education.

What constitutes a “rigorous” curriculum that will result in students being “college and career ready” is of great debate. Two models of human cognition competing with CCSS– Core Arts Standards and Mutiple Intelligences (MI) theory – have long postulated that competency in academic subjects is too thin of a yardstick by which to measure both educational quality and student success.

Under the No Child Left Behind law for the past 11 years both Arts education and MI inspired curriculum have been viewed as distractions or antithetical to a curriculum designed to maximize student test scores. The authors of Common Core suggest that this will no longer be the case.

The purpose of this report is to test that assertion by examining CCSS in relationship to Core Arts Standards and the eight Multiple intelligences. Curricular implications are described for all teachers and types of schools including Technical, Arts and typical schools.

Common Core State Standards Compared to Arts Standards

A 2013 report by the College Board for the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) found that there are 75 direct mentions of arts activities in English Language Arts (ELA) standards.

When ELA standards are compared to cognitive skills associated with arts-based practices, (Imagine, Investigate, Construct, Reflect) many overlaps are observed. Of the 48 different components of CCSS standards the following numbers of connections are reported: Imagine= 27; Investigate = 36; Construct = 28 and Reflect = 43.

Common Core State Standards Compared to Multiple intelligences

An overview of skills associated with ELA and MI reveal an excellent fit with academic aspects of Linguistic intelligence and a number of instances where the Logical (analysis) and the Interpersonal (others’ point of view) and some Spatial (visual data, media, displays) are included. There are a few mentions of metacognitive skills associated with Intrapersonal (reflect, self-directed learning) intelligence.

The pragmatic, everyday use of oral language for speaking and listening are included in CSS and there is a hint of some of the more creative aspects of language use for story-telling and poetry, but the standards are predominantly focused on academic, analytical (logical) language functions.

The Mathematics Skills standards are directly related to half of Logical-mathematical intelligence. The Mathematics Practices are strongly correlated with the other Logical problem-solving aspects.

Conclusions

The CCSS strive to ensure that students have the ability to think analytically in the use of language and mathematics. This means that lesson plans need to incorporate regular doses of the Linguistic intelligence and Logical aspect of the Logical-mathematical intelligence across the curriculum. Additionally, including the Intrapersonal, Interpersonal and, to a lesser extent, the Spatial intelligence in lessons will be advantageous to develop students “thinking skills.” The remaining three intelligences (Musical, Kinesthetic and Naturalist) are only tangentially related to the Common Core standards.

Authors of the Core ELA standards advise curriculum writers to create “rich tasks” that include the specific content standards and this guidance is well aligned with both an Arts education and Multiple Intelligences inspired curriculum. Three general strategies are identified to engage students in “rich tasks” that require increasingly “rigorous” thinking strategies. The first is a choice of Arts / Technical curriculum; the second, is a curriculum that is focused around a “rich project or performance;” and the third, is using each students’ MI strength in a cooperative learning group activity.

When high standards for a “thinking curriculum” are embedded in a personalized, “rich curriculum” then we will create the kind of schooling that is engaging, inclusive and rigorous.

Introduction

There is a great stirring in the land as schools everywhere delve into the meaning and implications of the emerging Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The purpose of CCSS as developed by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers is to establish one “yardstick’ by which all schools may be measured nationwide rather than many different tests used by states. In this way, it is hoped that schools and teachers will be held accountable in the goal of providing a high quality education for all students.

What is driving this massive move for a new and improved yardstick different from the No Child Left Behind(NCLB) state tests that have ruled the land since 2002? There are a number of likely causes, but from my analyses they can be distilled down to three reasons. First, despite more than a decade of classroom implementation no real, meaningful and sustainable improvements are evident in students’ academic skills(1). (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013; Guisbond, 2012; Ravitich, 2011). The drive to improve students’ academic test scores works for the first few years after the onset of testing but, then further gains are minimal or disappear altogether (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013). Second, as a result of this intense (and failed) focus on test preparation there was a widespread “narrowing of the curriculum” so that courses deemed to be irrelevant to test success were discouraged and cut from students’ schedules and school offerings (Strauss, 2012).

The third reason is perhaps the most influential. Again, despite the drive to increase test scores in basic skills and knowledge, major corporationsand business interests across the nation continue to complain loudly that too many high school graduates (who may have passed the tests) are ill-prepared to be good workers. These three reasons have led the education advisors to our nation’s governors to the astonishing conclusion, “Hey, the rote memorization inherent in the test-prep realm of NCLB isn’t working! What we need are new and better tests.”

Forty-six out of 50 states (and the District of Columbia) have pledged to adopt CCSS with massive fundingmainly from the federal government for test development. Only a handful of states are refusing to sign on to what they say is a compulsory “national test” of educational success. These states believe that it is each state’s right to conduct its own educational policy and testing and they resent anyperceived federal interference. A few other states are having second thoughts about the quick implementation of CCSS due to a lack of funding to prepare both teachers and students for the new tests.

What have you heard about CCSS? Have you gotten familiar with the new standards for English Language Arts and Math yet? What will be the implications for your teaching, curriculum design and course offerings?These are the kinds of questions nagging at educators around America as they prepare for yet another change in the expectations placed upon them by society. It seems that the testing yardstick has changed about every few years since NCLB was first enacted, so it is understandable if educators are cynical and weary of constantly shifting goalposts.

The Educational Standards Movement

The education standards movement in the United States kicked into high gear in 1994 with the passage of Goals 2000: Educate America Act. The main goal of this federal law was to improve education through the establishment of standards and the identification of best practices in teaching and learning. It is widely recognized that this law was enacted as a direct result of the highly influential 1983 reportA Nation at Risk:The Imperative for Educational Reform. This report cited a steady decline in students’ academic test scores (as compared with other nations) as evidence that classroom teachers ware failing America’s students due to a lack of “rigor.” However, subsequent statistical reanalysis of the data used in the Nation at Risk study found strong evidence that contradicted the report’s conclusions (Miller, 1991). It is possible that the report’s conclusions were more the author’s initial premises that were then supported by the faulty use of aggregate student achievement statistics(1).

Whatever the case, the report provided ammunition for the launch of the national testing movement. It was reasoned thatinstruction would become more rigorous and curriculum more cohesiveif students were administered tests on a regular basis. Initially, testing by the states was voluntary but, with the passage of No Child Left Behind law in 2001 the age of “accountability” and “high stakes” testing began with severe consequences for both students and schools. Unfortunately, 10+ years of concerted effort have failed to achieve the goal of improving students’ academic outcomes, so it was back to the drawing board for the nation’s governors who have responded to the hue and cry of influential business leaders.

The problem, the governors’ advisers argue, is that, the plethora of tests developed by 50 different states are flawed, so they set about to redesign the tests so that schools produce competent workers. The old and faulty tests only measure basic knowledge and skills and this is inadequate to produce high school graduates who are “college and career ready.” The new and improved standards are designed to be more “rigorous” as they test for “thinking skills.” In a knowledge–based economy, business requires workers who can “think” and not just memorize rote skills and knowledge. Of course, these “thinking skills” tests will be limited to the “core academic” subjects and focus most intensely on reading and math skills.

Why should tests made to measure student outcomes in reading and math skills be expected to produce a better workforce for the 21st century? There area number of alternative views of what a successful high school graduate should be able to do that pertain to everyday cognitive behaviors. This includes the Arts Standards that have widespread recognition as well are the more recently developed Framework for 21st Century Learningand Common Career Technical Core (See Appendix 1). These three documents describe cognitive skills as well as specific content and behavioral competencies as student learning goals.

The reason that more “rigorous testing” is the answer to the complex problem of mediocre test scores is based on the implicit assumption that human intelligence is fully described by an IQ score. The old adage states that the purpose of schooling is to develop the “three Rs- ‘reading, ‘riting and ‘rithematic.” An IQ score is, at root, an average of your ability to read and think logically, as evidenced in math calculations. What the designers of CCSS standards assume is that students will become better suited to workplace needs if they perform better on tests of academic intelligence. Achieving this result is contingent upon teachers structuring their lessons and curriculum in such a way that students will demonstrate greater self-discipline and persistence to obtain higher-level abstract thinking skills required by more “rigorous tests.”The authors of CCSS appear to believe that this will happen despite it not occurring over the course of several decades of nationwide testing with painful consequences.

A Whole Brain Perspective

In the 20+ years since the standards movement began, there have been great strides toward understanding how the brain processes information and learns. The question remains, however, if traditional schooling alone can drive up student test scores. Two factors are missing from this equation. First, unaccounted for is the fundamentally important role that the family and home-life activities play in students’ academic success. Alsomissing is any discussion of internal factors pertinent to each student. What if the key to higher thinking skills is not simply “hammering at the weaknesses,” but instead is using each student’s unique thinking strengths to leverage success? What if the second key to promoting student success is guiding parents on how to support this strengths-based approach with personalized home education plans?

Research has demonstrated that academic success is correlated with self-discpline, self-efficacy and motivation at levels equal with or greater than innate ability (Bandura, 1993; Duckworth and Seligman, 2005). These positive behaviors are increased when students use their strengths to learn and will become more actively engaged students when their peer status is blostered via public recognition of their unique MI abilities (Cohen, 1998; Hall-Haley, 2004).

These arguments are inherent in a whole-brain view of human intelligence as embodied in the theory of Multiple Intelligences (Gardner, 1983). Gardner and a number of subsequent researchers provide a body of cross-cultural, bio-psychological evidence to support the contention that the human brain possesses at least eight distinct forms of intelligence. This perspective acknowledges the importance of the two academic intelligences – Linguistic and Logical-mathematical – that comprise IQ. However, MI theory postulatesthat IQ is a constricted view of the brain’s potential rooted in 19th century technology and flawed assumptions of how the brain works. Can merely making tweaks to testing technology based on erroneous assumptionsof how the mind-brain operates be successful?

A Multiple Intelligences understanding of the brain’s potential describes eight distinct intelligences that have value to both the individual as well as the culture. In fact, the value of the eight intelligences is thoroughly documented by a vast array of evidence from numerous disciplines ranging from brain science and educational psychology to evolutionary biology to cross-cultural anthropological research (Shearer, 2009). When the eight intelligences are recognized for their value to individuals and culture, thenseveral broad doors open up for enacting school improvement. First, we can redefine the desired outcome variables that describe a “successful education.” Second, we can creatively leverage success by the use of a variety thinking strengths rather than “hammering at weaknesses” (Chen, J., Krechevsky, M., & Viens, J., 1998).Third, an integrated, intersciplinary curriculum can be created that will engage students in a rich and deeply engaging set of activities (Hoerr, 1994).

The development of new CCSS compatible tests reminds me of the carpenter with only a hammer in his toolbox. To him, every problem looks like a nail. When he gets frustrated then he reaches for a larger hammer. However, when we value the full set of human abilities in the brain’s tool box, then we can use a saw when necessary, select a wrench when the pipe is stuck or drill the right sized hole as the circumstances require. Yes, sometimes a bigger hammer will do a better job but not when a skill saw is called for.

What complicates our framing of the problem of mediocre education is that it is a messy relationship between our “description” of the situation (what’s wrong) and the “prescription” (what to do) to resolve it. This relationship lies at the heart of the art of teaching and it is a mistake to reduce it to a simplistic formula or jingoistic slogan, such as “back to basics” or “higher standards.” The depth of this messiness will become clear as we examine the relationship among three powerful descriptions of human learning: Common Core State Standards; Core Arts Standards, and the Multiple Intelligences. These analyses will be followed by an examination of instructional and curricular implications for all types of educators: arts, technical and teachers in typical schools.

When we describe the circumstances of a “problem” we do so through the lens of our own value system. This means that some variables in a problematic situation will be neglected, ignored or simply unseen because they are outside the view framed by our own particular perspective. When the theory of Multiple Intelligences was introduced in 1983 it achieved worldwide acclaim. It was enthusiastically received by teachers everywhere because it matched with their direct classroom experience. MI helps teachers to understand students failing to achieve academic success but who, in their perspective, were not “stupid.” MI theory provides teachers with a powerful language to describe how such students “learn differently” and extends the common (although fuzzy) notions of “learning styles” that teachers have used since the 1960s to describe students’ thinking differences.