Certain types of students and certain patterns of student abilities represent a good match with traditional views of teaching and learning, which emphasize the training of analytical thinking and reasoning ability, and memorization and analysis of basic facts and figures. Most readers, in fact, learned in this traditional way. Students with talents that matched the demands of the classroom did well, while (some would argue) equally talented students with different profiles of abilities were left behind. 

What does current psychological research into the nature of intelligence and academic achievement suggest about how we can bridge this disparity? One possibility for reform of the higher education program is to challenge the theoretical grounds that the current curriculum is based upon. By incorporating modern ideas on the nature of intelligence and academic achievement into an academic program from the beginning, college educators and administrators alike will have a firm position in science from which to enact informed and careful educational reforms.

Educators and researchers share the goal of helping all students optimize their potential. The question is how best to achieve this goal. One teaching approach that has gained many followers is the multiple-intelligences approach (MI). 

Gardner's Theory 

Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, which has been widely applied in the classroom in the last two decades, has been particularly influential among teachers.1 Gardner's theory is distinct from many other views on intelligence in that he argues that there is not a single intelligence, but rather that each of us has varying degrees of eight distinct intelligences.2 A person's level of competence in each of these intelligences, or ability domains, determines not only how well that person can perform in specific skill areas, such as spatial reasoning, but also contributes to an overall composite picture of that person's unique pattern of abilities. In Gardner's view, a person's intelligence cannot be captured by a single, global number like an IQ score. Rather, intelligence is most fully described by taking into account the full range of abilities that a person may possess across the broad spectrum of human cognitive functioning.