There is no “megatest” on the market that can provide a comprehensive survey of your students’ multiple intelligences. If anyone should tell you they have a computer-scored test that in 15 minutes can provide a bar graph showing the eight “peaks” and “valleys” of each student in your class or school, I’d suggest that you be very skeptical. This isn’t to say that formal testing can’t provide some information about a student’s intelligences; as I discuss later, it can provide clues to various intelligences. The single best tool for assessing students’ multiple intelligences, however, is probably one readily available to all of us: simple observation.

I’ve often humorously suggested to teachers that one good way to identify students’ most highly developed intelligences is to observe how they misbehave in class. The strongly linguistic student will be talking out of turn,the highly spatial student will be doodling and daydreaming, the interpersonally inclined student will be socializing, the bodily-kinesthetic student will be fidgeting, and the naturalistically engaged student might well bring an animal to class without permission! These students are metaphorically saying through their misbehaviors: “This is how I learn, teacher, and if you don’t teach me in the way that I most naturally learn, guess what? I’m going to do it anyway!” These intelligence-specific misbehaviors, then, are sort of a cry for help—a diagnostic indicator of how students want to be taught.

Another good observational indicator of students’ proclivities is how they spend their free time in school. In other words, what do they do when nobody is telling them what to do? If you have a “choice time” in class when students can choose from a number of activities, what activities do students pick? Highly linguistic students might gravitate toward books, social students toward group games and gossip, spatial students toward drawing, bodily-kinesthetic students toward hands-on building activities, and naturalistically inclined students toward the gerbil cage or aquarium. Observing kids in these student-initiated activities can tell a world about how they learn most effectively.

Every teacher should consider keeping a notebook, diary, or journal handy in a desk for recording observations of this kind. Of course, if you’re working with 150 students a day at the middle or high school level, regularly recording observations for each student would hardly be possible. You might, however, single out the two or three most troublesome or puzzling students in class and focus your MI assessment upon them. Even if you have a class of 25 to 35 students, writing a couple of lines about each student each week may pay off in the long run. Writing two lines a week for 40 weeks yields 80 lines, or three to four pages of solid observational data for each student.

To help organize your observations of a student’s multiple intelligences, you can use a checklist like the one in Figure 3.2. Keep in mind that this checklist is not a test—it has not been subjected to any protocols necessary to establish reliability and validity—and should only be used in conjunction with other sources of assessment information when describing students’ multiple intelligences.

In addition to observation and checklists, there are several other excellent ways to get assessment information about students’ multiple intelligences: Collect documents. Anecdotal records are not the only way to document students’ strongest intelligences. Teachers should consider having a digital camera available to snap pictures of students displaying evidence of their multiple intelligences. Photos are particularly useful for documenting products or experiences that might be gone in another 10 minutes, like giant
Lego structures. If students show a particular capacity for telling stories or singing songs, record them and keep the recording as a document. If students have drawing or painting abilities, keep samples of their work or take photos of them. If students show their greatest assets during a football game or through a hands-on demonstration of how to fix a machine or plant a flower, capture their performance on videotape. Ultimately, MI assessment data will consist of several kinds of documents, including photos, sketches, samples of schoolwork, audio and video samples, color photocopies, and more. Creating computer files for these documents and putting them on CD or DVD can allow all of this information to be conveniently included on a single disc and reviewed by teachers, administrators, parents, and the students themselves. (For more on assessment through multiple intelligences, see Chapter 10.)

Look at school records. As two-dimensional and lifeless as they sometimes appear, cumulative records can provide important information about a student’s multiple intelligences. Look at the student’s grades over the years. Are grades in math and the hard sciences consistently higher than grades in literature and the social sciences? If so, this may be evidence of an inclination toward logical-mathematical rather than linguistic intelligence.

High grades in art and graphic design may indicate well-developed spatial intelligence, while As and Bs in physical education and shop class may point toward bodily-kinesthetic abilities. Similarly, standardized test scores can sometimes provide differential information about a student’s intelligences. On intelligence tests, for example, there are often subtests that tap linguistic intelligence (vocabulary and “information” categories), logical-mathematical intelligence (analogies, arithmetic), and spatial intelligence (picture arrangement, block design). A number of other tests may point toward specific intelligences. Here is a partial list of the kinds of tests that may relate to each intelligence:

Linguistic— • reading tests, language tests, the verbal sections of intelligence and achievement tests
Logical-mathematical— • Piagetian assessments, math achievement tests, the reasoning sections of intelligence tests
Spatial— • visual memory and visual-motor tests, art aptitude tests, some performance items on intelligence tests
Bodily-kinesthetic— • manual dexterity tests, some motor subtests in neuropsychological batteries, the President’s Physical Fitness Test
Interpersonal— • social maturity scales, sociograms, interpersonal projective tests (e.g., Family Kinetic Drawing)
Intrapersonal— • self-concept assessments, projective tests, tests of emotional intelligence
Naturalist— • test items that include questions about animals, plants, or natural settings

School records may also contain valuable anecdotal information about a student’s multiple intelligences. One of the most valuable sources, I’ve discovered, is the kindergarten teacher’s report. Often, the kindergarten teacher is the only educator to see the child regularly using all eight intelligences.

Consequently, comments like “loves finger painting,” “moves gracefully during music and dance time,” or “creates beautiful structures with blocks” can provide clues to a student’s spatial, musical, or bodilykinesthetic proclivities.

When reviewing a student’s cumulative records, I’ve found it useful to photocopy the records (with permission from the school and parents, of course) and then take a highlighter and highlight all the positive information about that student, including the highest grades and test scores and the positive observations of others. I then type up each piece of highlighted information on a separate sheet of paper and organize the sheets according to intelligences. This practice provides me with solid information about a student’s strongest intelligences that I can then communicate to parents, administrators,
and the student’s teachers. This approach allows you to begin …
(This article is summary only, source: Multiple Intelligences in The Classroom 3rd Edition by Thomas Armstrong)

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