Multiple Intelligences and Blooms’ Taxonomy
Introduction
Education is a basic need for both gifted and special children. Given this, therefore, a differentiated curriculum is inevitable for a comprehensive care of both needy and gifted learners. The revised Bloom’s taxonomy was integrated with multiple intelligences theory to ensure that teachers use a properly planned tool for curriculum in executing their duties. Integration of the two concepts enabled teaching to cut across all strengths and abilities of children and to challenge the intellectually. As a result, teachers have since then managed to graduate more successful learners from different institutions regardless of their physical challenges. For easy understanding of the impact of Bloom’s taxonomy and Gardener’s multiple intelligences theory in education, my paper will examine the differences in the two concepts and how they have changed planning of a curriculum.
Gardener's Multiple Intelligences theory
According to Gardener, intelligence is a biopsychological potential that enables a learner to analyze any gathered information in a certain way at a given time, then solve related problems that are valued in a community (Maupin, 2007). He based his argument on the creativity of a person and concluded that performance is directly related to personal intelligence and creativity. Different people reason differently depending on their level of intelligence. One might be weak in some fields but strong in some others. The theory gives emphasis on the fact that a teacher is mainly supposed to identify talents of their students and nurture them. Multiple intelligences theory encourages teachers to remain open minded while dealing with children to identify which intelligences their students are inclined to. Identifying strengths of some learners also help them to support those who are not so strong and finally they will be able to achieve their goals. In his work, Gardener enumerated nine forms of intelligence which should give light to teachers while planning their curriculum. These include verbal, interpersonal, naturalistic, logical-mathematical, kinaesthetic, musical, interpersonal, existential and spatial intelligences (Maupin, 2007). For learning to remain effective, teachers should attend to all the intelligences since children are gifted differently.
Blooms’ Taxonomy
On the other hand, more contribution towards education was received from Blooms' taxonomy. In the discussions held in 1948, the American Psychological Association, which was led by Bloom together with other groups of educators, stressed on the need to have a classification of educational goals and objectives (Oluwatoyin, 2015). The intention was to develop a classification method which would incorporate thinking behaviors believed to play a critical role in learning. Thinking patterns were eventually classified as three domains: The effective-attitudinal, the cognitive knowledge and the psychomotor skills. Blooms taxonomy also included six cognition levels to guide teachers in their work: Knowledge, application, comprehension, evaluation, synthesis and analysis (Oluwatoyin, 2015). Knowledge is considered the lowest level in the hierarchy and it is supposed to help students recall information as presented. Comprehension, on the other hand, helps them to organize ideas into different categories. The application demonstrates the ability of students to use …
