Educational Psychology:

Theory and Practice

Chapter 4

Student Diversity
 Organizing Questions

• What Is the Impact of Culture on

Teaching and Learning?
• How Does Socioeconomic Status Affect
Student Achievement?
• How Do Ethnicity and Race Affect
Students’ School Experiences?
 Organizing Questions
• How Do Language Differences and
Bilingual Programs Affect Student
Achievement?
• What Is Multicultural Education?
• How Do Gender and Gender Bias Affect
Students’ School Experiences?
• How Do Students Differ in Intelligence
and Learning Styles?
 Intelligence
q Psychologists have come up with a workable
definition that combines many of the ideas.
q They define intelligence as the ability to learn from
one’s experiences, acquire knowledge, and use
resources effectively in adapting to new situations
or solving problems.
q These are the characteristics that people need to be
able to survive in their culture.
 Intelligence

1. General Aptitude for Learning.

2. Ability to Acquire and Use Knowledge/Skills.

OR

1. Ability to:
• Deal with Abstractions.
• Solve Problems.
• Learn.
 Different Views of Intelligence

Binet Spearman Sternberg Gardner

1904 1927 2000 2006
• Intelligence • General • Triarchic • Multiple
Quotient Intelligence Mind Intelligences
• IQ • “g” • Analytical • Linguistic
• Logical-
• Practical Mathematical
• Creative • Musical
• Spatial
• Bodily-
Kinesthetic
• Naturalistic
• Interpersonal
• Intrapersonal
• Existential
Origins of Intelligence

Social
Heredity
Environment

Combination
 Measuring Intelligence
qThe first formal test was created by
Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon to help
identify French students who needed more
help with learning

qBinet’s Mental Ability Test Key element

to be tested was child’s mental age
Theories of Intelligence
 Spearman’s g factor
Charles Spearman saw intelligence as two
different abilities:
q g factor (general intelligence) : the ability to
reason and solve problems
q s factor (specific intelligence): the task-
specific abilities in certain areas
such as music, business, or art
 Guilford’s Model of Intelligence
q Joy Paul Guilford rejected Spearman’s view that
intelligence could be characterized by a single
numerical parameter (“general intelligence factor”
or g).
q He argued that intelligence consists of numerous
intellectual abilities.
q He first proposed a model with 120,
then 150, and finally 180
independently operating factors in
intelligence.
 Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory
Robert J. Sternberg has theorized that there are three kinds of intelligence
called the triarchic theory of intelligence:

q Analytical/Academic Intelligence: the ability to break problems down

into component parts, or analysis, for problem solving

q Creative Intelligence: the ability to deal with new and different

concepts and to come up with new ways of solving problems
(divergent thinking)

q Practical Intelligence: the ability to use

information to get along in life – how to be tactful,
how to manipulate situations to their advantage and
how to use inside information to increase their
odds of success.
 Gardner’s Nine Intelligences
q Howard Gardner was one of the later theorists to
propose the existence of several kinds of
intelligence.
q Although many people use terms reason, logic,
and knowledge as if they are the same ability,
Gardner believes that they are different aspects of
intelligence, along with several other abilities.
q He originally listed seven different kinds
of intelligence but later added an
eight type and then a ninth.
 Nine Multiple Intelligences
1. Linguistic
2. Logical / Mathematical
3. Musical
4. Spatial
5. Bodily/ Kinesthetic
6. Interpersonal
7. Intrapersonal
8. Naturalistic
9. Existential
 1. Visual/Spatial Intelligence
✦ ability to perceive the visual

✦ These learners tend to think in pictures and need to create vivid mental
images to retain information. They enjoy looking at maps, charts,
pictures, videos, and movies.

Their skills include:

✦ puzzle building, reading, writing, understanding charts and graphs, a
good sense of direction, sketching, painting, creating visual metaphors
and analogies (perhaps through the visual arts), manipulating images,
constructing, fixing, designing practical objects, interpreting visual
images.

Possible career interests:

navigators, sculptors, visual artists, inventors,
architects, interior designers, mechanics,
engineers
 2. Verbal/Linguistic Intelligence
✦ ability to use words and language

✦ These learners have highly developed auditory skills and are generally
elegant speakers. They think in words rather than pictures.

Their skills include:

✦ listening, speaking, writing, story telling, explaining, teaching, using
humor, understanding the syntax and meaning of words, remembering
information, convincing someone of their point of view, analyzing
language usage.

Possible career interests:

Poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician,
translator
 3. Logical/Mathematical Intelligence
✦ ability to use reason, logic and numbers.

✦ These learners think conceptually in logical and numerical patterns

making connections between pieces of information. Always curious
about the world around them, these learner ask lots of questions and like
to do experiments.
Their skills include:
✦ problem solving, classifying and categorizing information, working with
abstract concepts to figure out the relationship of each to the other,
handling long chains of reason to make local progressions, doing
controlled experiments, questioning and wondering about natural events,
performing complex mathematical calculations,
working with geometric shapes

Possible career paths:

Scientists, engineers, computer programmers,
researchers, accountants, mathematicians
 4. Bodily/Kinesthetic Intelligence
✦ ability to control body movements and handle objects skillfully.

✦ These learners express themselves through movement. They have a

good sense of balance and eye-hand co-ordination. (e.g. ball play,
balancing beams). Through interacting with the space around them,
they are able to remember and process information.

Their skills include:

✦ dancing, physical co-ordination, sports, hands on experimentation,
using body language, crafts, acting, miming, using their hands to create
or build, expressing emotions through the body

Possible career paths:

Athletes, physical education teachers, dancers,
actors, firefighters, artisans
 5. Musical/Rhythmic Intelligence
✦ ability to produce and appreciate music.

✦ These musically inclined learners think in sounds, rhythms and

patterns. They immediately respond to music either appreciating
or criticizing what they hear. Many of these learners are
extremely sensitive to environmental sounds (e.g. crickets, bells,
dripping taps).
Their skills include:
✦ singing, whistling, playing musical instruments, recognizing
tonal patterns, composing music, remembering melodies,
understanding the structure and rhythm of music

Possible career paths:

Musician, disc jockey, singer, composer
 6. Interpersonal Intelligence
✦ ability to relate and understand others.
✦ These learners try to see things from other people's point of view in order
to understand how they think and feel. They often have an uncanny
ability to sense feelings, intentions and motivations. They are great
organizers, although they sometimes resort to manipulation. Generally
they try to maintain peace in group settings and encourage co-operation.
They use both verbal (e.g. speaking) and non-verbal language (e.g. eye
contact, body language) to open communication channels with others.
Their skills include:
✦ seeing things from other perspectives (dual-perspective), listening, using
empathy, understanding other people's moods and feelings, counseling,
co-operating with groups, noticing people's moods, motivations and
intentions, communicating both verbally and non-verbally,
building trust, peaceful conflict resolution, establishing
positive relations with other people.
Possible Career Paths:
Counselor, salesperson, politician, business person
 7. Intrapersonal Intelligence
✦ ability to self-reflect and be aware of one's inner state of being.
✦ These learners try to understand their inner feelings, dreams,
relationships with others, and strengths and weaknesses.

Their Skills include:

✦ Recognizing their own strengths and weaknesses, reflecting and
analyzing themselves, awareness of their inner feelings, desires
and dreams, evaluating their thinking patterns, reasoning with
themselves, understanding their role in relationship to others

Possible Career Paths:

✦ Researchers, theorists, philosophers
 8. Naturalist Intelligence
✦ The Naturalist intelligence has to do with how we relate
to our surroundings and where we fit into it.
✦ These learners with Naturalist intelligence have a
sensitivity to and appreciation for nature. They are
gifted at nurturing and growing things as well as the
ability to care for and interact with animals. They can
easily distinguish patterns in nature.
 8. Naturalist Intelligence

Common Characteristics Career Matches

✦ Bothered by pollution ✦ Conservationist
✦ Enjoys having pets ✦ Gardener
✦ Likes to learn about nature ✦ Farmer
✦ Enjoys gardening ✦ Animal Trainer
✦ Appreciates scenic places ✦ Park Ranger
✦ Feels alive when in contact with ✦ Scientist
nature ✦ Botanist
✦ Likes to camp, hike, walk and ✦ Zookeeper
climb ✦ Geologist
✦ Notices nature above all other
✦ Marine Biologist
things
✦ Ecologist
✦ Conscious of changes in weather
✦ Veterinarian
 9. Existential Intelligence
✦ This learner enjoys thinking and questions the way
things are. He shows curiosity about life and death and
shows a philosophical awareness and interest

✦ Ability to be sensitive to, or have the capacity for

conceptualizing or tackling deeper or larger questions
about human existence such as the meaning of life, why
are we born, why do we die, what is consciousness…..

✦ Possible Career Path

✦ Philosophical thinkers, ESQ Trainers
 Measuring Intelligence
What IQ would a person have whose mental age is 10 and
chronological age is 15?

Mental Age (MA): an individual’s level of mental

development relative to others
Chronological Age (CA): number of years since birth
IQ = MA/CA x 100

MA=CA, IQ = 100 (equal 100)

MA>CA IQ à <100 (more than 100)
MA<CA IQ à >100 (less than 100)
 Learning and Intelligence

Other Factors that Influence

Learning

1. Prior Knowledge.
2. Motivation.
3. Quality of Instruction.
4. Nature of Instruction.
 What are learning styles?
✦ Learning
styles are simply different
approaches or ways of learning
 Theories of Learning Styles

• Students Have Different Ways of Learning

1. Visual Learner

2. Auditory Learner

3. Kinesthetic Learner
 Theories of Learning Preferences

• Students Have Different Ways of Learning

1. Amount of Lighting.

2. Hard/Soft Setting.

3. Noisy Surroundings.

4. Working Alone/ Peers.

 Teachers and Learning Styles and
Preferences
Teachers Should:

• Detect and Respond to Differences in How Children Learn.

• Broaden Student Assessment.
• Reexamine the Curriculum.
• Provide Professional Development for Educators.
 Visual learners
learn through seeing
- learners need to see teacher’s body
language, facial expression
- prefer sitting at the front of the classroom
- think in pictures
- (e.g. diagrams)
- prefer to take detailed notes
 Auditory Learners
………….learning through listening
- learn best through verbal lectures
-interpret the underlying meanings of speech
through listening to tone of voice, pitch,
speed and other nuances
-benefit from reading text
aloud and using a tape
recorder
 Tactile/ Kinesthetic
learn through moving, doing and touching
-learn best through a hands-on-approach
-actively exploring the physical world around
them
-it is hard to sit still for long periods
of time
-distracted by their need for activity and
exploration
 The Intentional Teacher

1. Is Aware of his/her own Cultural Perspectives.

2. Has Instructional Goals that Reflect the Needs of
the Community.
3. Knows the Culture of the Various Inhabitants of the
Community they teach in.
4. Varies Types of Groups Used in Instruction.
5. Makes use of Sheltered Instructional Practices.
6. Collaborates with Other Teachers and Work as a
TEAM.
7. Utilizes Teaching Practices that are Equitable.
Chapter Reflection

List 4 ways you

would try to
meet the needs
of children who
are ELL.
End of Chapter 4