Multiple intelligences: Educational and cognitive development with a guiding focus

Abstract

Development and dissemination of innovative pedagogies continues to be one of the challenges of the 21st century. The visible deficiencies in the educational field have highlighted the need for other types of pedagogies that promote complete student development. Gardner’s theory about multiple intelligences (MIs) has great potential that has not yet been realised in practice in school contexts. With this research we aimed to analyse the relationship between the intelligences that students develop in primary education and the increase in certain cognitive and academic capacities, and to demonstrate that a pedagogy based on Gardner’s theory does more to promote creativity, maturation and school performance than traditional teaching-learning pedagogies. A total of 420 participants from 2 state-funded schools participated in this study (experimental group = EG; control group = CG). The EG (n = 230) was taught using Gardner’s theory and the CG (n = 190) was taught according to traditional pedagogy. There was an association between the intelligences developed by the students and their academic, creative, and maturational levels. Finally, significant differences were found between the EG and CG, with the EG obtaining a higher mean in the variables analysed in favour of the EG. In conclusion, using MIs in classrooms allows for a more mature and creative development and greater academic performance.