Week 3: Mathematical Learning Styles and Modalities, Mathematics & Multiple Intelligence Theory

Mathematics is not a popular subject. Pupils tend to dislike it, especially when they fail to obtain the desired academic results, and it can cause anxiety and even phobia. The difficulties they find are not only due to insufficient knowledge of the elements of maths, but also to the (in)ability to transfer knowledge in order to face different situations successfully. There are high rates of school failure or failure, mostly in the two compulsory years at the secondary level.

In order to overcome these phenomena, it is necessary that teachers discover new teaching activities and procedures, which have to be liberating and promotional, rich, stimulating, challenging, informal, producing participation among the students. The classical approach in teaching Maths creates passive learners; while it’s important to engage pupils in order to have them take an active role (Bednar, Coughlin, Evans, & Sievers, 2002).

In the 20th century, two great theories have been put forward in an attempt to interpret human differences and to design educational models around these differences. The learning-style theory has its roots in the psychoanalytic community; multiple intelligences theory is the fruit of cognitive science and reflects an effort to rethink the theory of measurable intelligence embodied in intelligence testing.

Both, in fact, combine insights from biology, anthropology, psychology, medical case studies, and an examination of art and culture. But learning styles emphasize the different ways people think and feel as they solve problems, create products, and interact. The theory of multiple intelligences is an effort to understand how cultures and disciplines shape human potential. Though both theories claim that dominant ideologies of intelligence inhibit our understanding of human differences, learning styles are concerned with differences in the process of learning, whereas multiple intelligences center on the content and products of learning. Until now, neither theory has had much to do with the other.

Howard Gardner (1993) spells out the difference between the theories this way: " In MI theory, I begin with a human organism that responds (or fails to respond) to different kinds of contents in the world. . . . Those who speak of learning styles are searching for approaches that ought to characterize all contents (p. 45).

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