Submitted by tomski on 5 December, 2019 - 23:31.
WA Friday Lunch Talks are monthly meetings with presentations of current research results or research in progress by WA faculty, staff, or PhD students. Each talk is of 45 minutes (+15 minutes for discussion). We welcome all to a talk "Bogus ideas and pedagogical myths in FL research: a case against Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences" by dr Jacek Rysiewicz (Friday, Dec 15, 13:15-14:15, Sala Górna, Coll. Heliodori).
dr Jacek Rysiewicz
Department of Applied English Linguistics and Language Teaching
Bogus ideas and pedagogical myths in FL research: a case against Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences
In 1983 Howard Gardner in his Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences proposed a new way of looking at human intellectual capacities. His theory was received with a certain amount of interest in psychology, then was quite warmly embraced by researchers in pedagogy, and finally, at the end of 80’s was imported into the field of second language acquisition/learning where its reception was more than enthusiastic. The theory, which arose as a reaction to unitary, general factor theories of intelligence and which was generally viewed as a more democratic and fair account of human learning potential, has ever since cherished an unabated interest in SLA theorising as well as in more practically oriented L2 teaching/learning accounts. While Gardner’s suggestion was generally dropped from psychological research agendas after having been found an unpromising line of investigation MI theory still forms a strong and stable notion in SLA. Innumerable articles, papers, conference presentations, and scholarly theses have been published in the field with the MI theory as a focal perspective of theoretical and/or practical investigations. In the talk I will discuss major criticism levelled against the theory as well as ponder its unquavering appeal to FL/L2 researchers.
