Abstract
For decades, Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences has been embraced by the educational community. It has been the subject of professional development for teachers all over the world, it has been infused into teacher training programs everywhere, and whole schools have been built upon the theory as their very foundation. While it has been fully embraced in education, the theory didn’t gain this kind of traction in the psychological community or the scientific community. Increasing skepticism about the Theory of Multiple Intellingences has been growing over the years, and objective reflection about its merits for educators is necessary. By reviewing the works and ideas of Dr. Gardner himself, the nature of the research that lead him to his conclusions, the practical impact of implementing curriculum and instruction founded in MI, and the scientific basis for his and other theories like it, this work seeks to provide such a reflection.
Key Words: Multiple Intelligences, MI, Howard Gardner
From the moment, it came on the scene in 1983, Dr. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences made a big impression on scholars and policy makers worldwide, particularly those who work in the field of education. This theory has influenced curriculum design, professional development, lesson-planning, counseling, special education, and the development of Individualized Educational Plans (IEPs). One may even say that. Most in education regard the theory of multiple intelligences to be gospel truth. It is certainly applied as though it is, but there are critics of the theory as well. This is where I come into it.
From the moment I set foot into a classroom, preparing to get my teaching license, the Theory of Multiple Intelligences was delivered to me like the Ten Commandments to Moses or the definitive recipe for the best chicken soup ever. We were all fascinated as up-and-coming teachers, taking quizzes to determine which intelligences we fell into. “Oh yes, I am totally a kinesthetic learner”. “This totally nailed me; I am so interpersonal”. And so on some part of me, during discussions with others who were learning the theory about this, felt that it didn't have much distinction from a discussion about astrological signs. “Look at what it says about Sagittarius. That is so totally me.” “Look at what it says about being Libra. Oh my God, that is absolutely the way I am.” Even as far back as my early education as a teacher, the skeptical hackles on my neck were raised. Now, after 16 years of being a teacher, being given the opportunity to examine it more closely, I intend to take a more skeptical look at the Theory of Multiple Intelligences than I feel many in education have done.
For background here, Howard Gardner is an American developmental psychologist and author. He serves as the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, and is the senior director of Harvard Project Zero, focused on understanding learning through the arts. Since 1995, he has also been the co-director of The Good Project, supporting ethics in education by helping students consider the moral dilemmas that occur in everyday life, providing tools and strategies to make thoughtful decisions.
He is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, which he introduced in 1983’s Frames of Mind, adding future revisions 1999’s Intelligence Reframed. Gardner’s theory, widely embraced by teachers, school leaders, and most notably, special educators is based upon the belief that there are many ways for individuals to be intelligent.
Howard Earl Gardner was born July 11, 1943, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Ralph and Hilde Gardner, Jewish refugees who fled from Nazi Germany. He was a bookish child with a great fondness for reading. He was also a talented pianist, whose passion for music and art would serve as a partial underpinning for his conceptions of human cognition. In 1965, Gardner earned a bachelor’s degree in social relations from Harvard University, studying under famed developmental psychologist Erik Erikson. In 1971, he earned his doctorate, also from Harvard. He has accrued many accolades in his long career.
Anyone whose been connected to education in any learning environment has been exposed to this theory and its potential applications. For starters, in Frames of Mind and Intelligence, Multiple Perspectives, Gardner highly criticizes evaluating human intelligences by using IQ (or intelligence quotient) scores. “Much psychometric testing is linked to predicting children’s performance in school, therefore it is not surprising that psychometric views of intelligence are sometimes said to focus on language and mathematics, or ‘academic intelligence’, to the exclusion of other important problem-solving abilities.” (Gardner, Kornhaber, Wake, 1997). Gardner further decries the notion of Genetic Epistemologies put forth by Jean Piaget and lauds, as a valid precursor to his own work, the theory of the Zone of Proximal Development, brought to us by Lev Vygotsky. The former, he asserts too stridently assumes that all students have “scientific” minds, and the latter he praises for understanding the nature of hands-on social interaction as the foundation of a different kind of mind, somewhere off the radar of people like Piaget. (Gardner, Kornhaber, Wake, 1997)
He proposed an alternative and more layered system for evaluating and understanding intelligence. He asserts that human intelligence comprises eight intellectual capacities. He defines an intelligence as “a biophysical potential for our species to process certain kinds of information in certain kinds of ways.” (Gardner, 1999) These intelligences are logical-mathematical, musical, linguistic, bodily-kinesthetic, visual-spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic.
Presumably, those with Logical–Mathematical intelligences think abstractly and conceptually. They are able to see and explore patterns and relationships. They like to experiment, solve puzzles, and ask questions of a Socratic nature. They can best be taught through such things as investigations and logic games. They need to learn and form larger concepts as a precursor to being attentive to more minute particulars.
Those with Musical intelligence show sensitivity to rhythm and sound. They love music, but they are also sensitive to sounds in their environments. They may study better with music in the background, although brain science illustrates that only certain types of music are conducive to certain types of study. They are particularly annoyed by cacophony in a classroom. They can be taught by such things as turning lessons into metered phrases like poetry or song lyrics and using rhythmic speaking rhythmically.
Those with Linguistic intelligence are known to use words effectively and often effusively. They like playing word games, creating poetry, writing stories, and most notably, reading. Linguistic learners have highly developed listening skills and often think most profoundly in words. They can best be taught by simply allowing them to read and share.
Bodily-kinesthetic learners need to move and use their bodies effectively, like athletes, dancers or mechanics. They enjoy movement and making things. They are highly tactile. They tend to have a refined sense of body awareness and communicate well through body language. They can best be taught through hands-on learning, physical activity, or role playing. Tools for these learners could be tangible objects.
Visual-Spatial learners understand and think in terms of physical space. These are people like structural engineers, movers, and architects. They tend to be acutely aware of their environments. They like to draw, do jigsaw puzzles, play games like Tetris, and work with maps. They can best be taught through the use of drawings, models, graphics, charts, photographs, drawings, and 3-D modeling.
Those with Interpersonal intelligence learn through interaction with others. They’re the socialites. They have many friends and often heightened empathy for others. They can best be taught through group activities, Socratic seminars, and dialogues.
Those with Intrapersonal intelligence achieve understanding via their own goals and interests. These are the self-reflectors. They are the most independent of the learners. These learners tend to be introverted. They're very self-aware, and when they share thoughts and ideas, they display unique wisdom and insights. They can be highly strong willed and confidence with opinions. They can best be taught through independent study and contemplation. Tools for these learners include books, diaries, privacy, and time.
People with Naturalist intelligence are good at caring for growing things as well as the ability to love and interact with animals. They have a sensitivity to and appreciation for nature, and they can readily connect patterns in a natural setting. They enjoy gardening and like to camp, hike, walk and climb. This eighth learning intelligence has been criticized as representing not a form of intelligence but, rather, a field of interest, and this is among the many reasons that MI has its detractors.
The chief criticism of MI Theory is that it is unscientific. “In the 15 years since the publication of Gardner’s Frames of Mind, multiple intelligences has gone from being a widely disputed theory to a rallying cry for school reformers to a cultural commonplace. And, amazingly, it has done so without ever winning over the scientific establishment. (Traub, 1998) It was considered a problem in 1998, and it remains largely unaddressed today. Individuals in sciences such as chemistry, biology and physics argue that, while psychologists claim to follow the scientific method, their means of study are insufficiently valid, and the fruits of their research are, therefore, unreliable. Vary Coates, a biologist, zoologist, and educator, familiar with both the science around intelligence and the push for MI in the classroom says, “Academic science is not build on data. None. It’s fru fru pop science, conducted by people who want to set trends and make a name for themselves. Gardner is just one among many like this. Unfortunately, it’s stuff like this that educational policy big wigs use to drive the system.” (Coates, 2018) Dr. Eric Benner, a Ph.D. in chemical engineering, takes a more gentle approach to this. “It’s an understandable desire to compare anything to STEM, thanks to the remarkable rigor of the hard sciences, but it is simply not empirically or epistemologically feasible—potentially for some cases in principle, for others in practice—for psychology to gain the same level of rigorous depth. And so I don’t think it is fair for society to generally hold soft sciences, or worse yet social sciences, to quite the same standard as STEM. That being said, I’m all for specific frameworks like multiple intelligences to receive better critique and require stronger empirical support before people light on it as a teaching tool.” (Benner, 2018)
To determine whether or not the Theory of Multiple Intelligences is credible, one may examine its development in Dr. Gardner’s own words. Gardner invokes ancient history to justify a long-standing basis for his theory. “For well over two thousand years, at least since the rise of the Greek city-state, a certain set of ideas has dominated certain discussions of the human condition in our civilization. This collection of ideas stresses the existence and importance of mental powers – capacities that have been variously termed rationality, intelligence, or the deployment of mind”. (Gardner, 1983)
He continues his line of reasoning by looking at very early ideas of what he deems multiple intelligences as historical referents. “In classical times, it was common to differentiate between reason, will, and feeling. Medieval thinkers had their trivium of grammar, logic and rhetoric, and their quadrivium of mathematics, geometry, astronomy, and music. As the science of psychology was launched, and even larger array of human mental abilities and faculties was posited.” (Gardner, 1983) He goes into further detail about these, endeavoring to point out that the idea that there are multiple intelligences is nothing new, but rather a notion that his work serves to more distinctly codify.
To codify these multiple intelligence, Gardner explains using the following approaches.
After I finished my training, I worked with two populations. I worked with children from different backgrounds and with different talents and with brain damaged patients, patients who were once okay, but who suffered a stroke, or trauma, or missile wound, or something like a tumor, some kind of brain damage … and what struck me was, when you have brain damage, the single most important thing is where the brain damage is … and depending upon where the brain damage is, you have different strengths and weaknesses. You might lose your language, you might lose your musical ability, you might lose your ability to find your way around, and so on. Similarly with kids, I found some kids were good in music, some kids were good at art, some kids were good in athletics, some kids were very good at convincing you of things, some kids would do very well in learning foreign languages but couldn't do math, some kids were great in science but couldn't analyze poetry, and I was just noticing this and was interested when I was surprised that somebody could do something but couldn't do something else or vice versa. So all of this running around in my mind, and then I had the opportunity to put my observations together into some kind of a book. (Gardner, 2012)
Of previous research on intelligence, Gardner has this to say: “Previous efforts (and there have been many) to establish independent intelligences have been unconvincing, chiefly because they rely on only one or, at the most, two lines of evidence. Separate “minds” or “faculties” have been posited solely on the basis of logical analysis, solely on the history of educational disciplines, solely on the results of intelligence testing, or solely on the insights obtained from brain study. These solitary efforts have rarely yielded the same list of competences and have thereby made a claim for multiple intelligences seem that much less tenable.” (Gardner, 1983)
Of the procedures in his own efforts, Gardner offers the following:
I have reviewed evidence from a large and hitherto unrelated group of sources; studies of pedagogy, gifted individuals, brain-damaged patients, idiots savants, normal children, normal adults, experts in different lines of work, and individuals from diverse cultures. A preliminary list of candidate intelligences has been bolstered and, to my mind, partially validated by converging evidence from these diverse sources. I have become convinced of the existence of an intelligence to the extent that it can be found in relative isolation in special populations (or absent in isolation in otherwise normal populations); to the extent that it may become highly developed in specific individuals or in specific cultures; and to the extent that psychometricians, experimental researchers, and/or experts in particular disciplines composite core abilities that, in effect, define the intelligence. Absence of some or all of these indices, of course eliminates a candidate intelligence. In ordinary life, as I will show, these intelligences is typically work in harmony, and so their autonomy may be invisible. But when the appropriate observational lenses are donned, the peculiar nature of each intelligence emerges with sufficient (and often surprising) clarity. (Gardner, 1983)
In essence, all that Gardner seems to have done is to make a thorough catalog of observations or multiple people, in various environments, working in various ways, coming to a series of conclusions with a semi-structured set of guidelines, and this, by itself, comes under serious fire from members of the scientific community who demand greater validity of research as a means of arriving at more reliable data sets. “Going from there to suggest that an individual may do better at one area than another is a rational thought. But is it testable, or better yet, is it falsifiable? It seems very hard to me to do that with these eight categories. And even if different people excel at different areas of cognitive ability, I take issue with the idea of calling those‘intelligences.’ Frankly, I’ve never heard a definition of ‘intelligence’ that I think nearly captures the idea both generally enough to encompass it and constrained well enough to test it. That’s a problem because it seems like Gardner is just redefining the word and not really giving us much clarity scientifically.” (Benner, 2018)
He, like many academic theoreticians, makes the distinction between a theory in science and a theory such as his own, claiming that “theory” has two meanings. “Among physical scientists, it is reserved for an explicit set or propositions linked conceptually and having individual and joint validity that can assessed through systematic experimentation. Laypeople use the term more loosely, to refer to any set of ideas put forth orally or in writing.” (Gardner, 1999) He defends his theory as essentially being somewhere in between the two, not as rigorously exercised as those developed by scientists, but more than just a simple set of ideas. He asserts that his theory if bolstered by a heightened plausibility. The stages of the scientific method are as follows:
Make an observation.
Ask a question.
Form a , or testable explanation.
Make a prediction based on the hypothesis.
Test the prediction.
Iterate: use the results to make new hypotheses or predictions
On this spectrum, Gardner’s theory falls somewhere between steps 2 & 3. It might be argued that, because the field of psychology is more conceptual than fields like such fields as physic, engineering, chemistry, etc., it can’t be held to the same standard of methodology, but if this is so, then can such a field as psychology rightly be called a science to begin with? If such propositions as Gardner’s are not examined under rigorous constraints, do we not invite potential disaster implementing practices, particularly in education, based upon them?
Like Skinner, he seems to reject direct study of the brain. To some extent, they may both be forgiven for this. They are each products of a time when brain study was not nearly as sophisticated as it is now. Today, however, thanks to incredible advances in neuroimaging, the brain is no longer the black box, the ineffable mystery it was decades ago, and now, in possession of the means to determine which parts of the brain light up when activating specific functions, we have the means to directly conduct valid scientific research about differentiated intelligences which could yield very reliable results. One would think that the faithful believers in MI would leap at the opportunity to utilize modern technology to prove that the theory is factual, but even according to Dr. Gardner himself, no significant effort has been made to do so. This may be because MI is now so thoroughly entrenched in education, treated as absolute gospel, that no one has felt the need to go to such lengths, or it may be, more balefully, the possibility that there is a real fear that MI could be proven false. With so many educational profiteers, from business trainers to educational publishing companies, making a cottage industry out of providing products and programs based in MI, now surely a multi-million-dollar-a-year industry annually, it isn’t too far out to surmise that the latter could be a serious motivating factor in not seeking definitive evidence one way or the other.
As to Gardner’s suppositions about the brain-damaged individuals that first inspired his further investigations, science now explains much more definitively what is going on neurologically with such individuals, and it points to human beings having a single, yet highly malleable intelligence in operation, rather than segmented intelligences operating independently or interdependently the way MI proposes. What he could not readily know in 1983 that we are far more knowledgeable about today is neuroplasticity. What Dr. Gardner was observing in brain damaged patients was not the brain activating multiple intelligences, but rather rearrangements of connections of neurons that engage one another. The brain anticipates stimulus and strives continuously to have associative flow. In cases of brain damage, this has caused people to suddenly exhibit new adaptive behaviors as well as a marked strengthening or diminishment of habitually demonstrated skill sets. Modern science, based upon magnetic resonance imaging and other means of literally seeing what’s happening in the minds, really renders Dr. Gardner’s earliest observations inadequate by today’s more exacting standards.
What, if any actual data may exist to support the theory of MI? The closest thing to a through scientific testing of MI comes from research done for a literary review by C. Branton Shearer and Jessica M. Karanian. They utilized 318 peer-reviewed functional neuroimaging studies and recorded the number of instances in which researchers appeared to associate which neural regions might be associated with any of Gardner’s eight units of intelligence. Looking at the frontal cortex, the temporal cortex, the parietal cortex, the insular cortex, the cingulate cortex, and the occipital cortex, the subcortical structures and the cerebellum, Shearer and Karanian referenced citations from the research documents they studied and transformed the frequencies of association into percentages in the hope that they could envision the incidence of references across the regions of intelligence. In this way, Shearer and Karanian attempted to identify neural connections to the multiple intelligences. This table represents the fruit of this labor.
[The Table on page 13] highlights the neural similarities and differences revealed by the primary neural regional analysis. For each intelligence, the primary neural regions are ranked based on the raw number of citations revealed by the literature review. The columns display the eight intelligences, while the rows represent the rank of each neural associate based on the frequency of citations associated with each intelligence. In some cells, multiple neural regions are listed – this simply reflects that those neural regions had identical citation frequencies. (Shearer, Karanian, 2017)
Shearer and Karanian suggest that their examination of multiple data sets reveals a sound correspondence among intelligences described by Gardner to cognitive neuroscience literature. They suggest that such literature supports theory. “Six of the eight intelligences were most associated with the frontal cortex, while the other two intelligences revealed the temporal cortex as most dominant [See the table above]. The parietal and cingulate cortices were the next most frequently associated with the intelligences. Alternatively, the cerebellum and insular cortex were never ranked within the top three most associated neural regions for any of the eight intelligences. These data highlight the commonalities among the eight intelligences. (Shearer, Karanian, 2017)
There are problems with their reviews of neurological literature however. By their own admission, their analysis provides only a foundation of support for MI, rather than definitive proof. They also faced too great a challenge when it came to managing the varieties of neural terminology that author used in the literature, making their interpretations less specific than they would have preferred. “Some researchers identified broad regions with a single label while others used multiple terms to identify sub-regions. Still others used Brodmann numbering, Talairach Atlas or the MNI Coordinate system. This variety of nomenclatures required a careful translation and mapping onto the three-level hierarchy (Primary, sub-regions and particular structures) described below. (Shearer, Karanian, 2017) The interpretation of the data from over these 318 studies, therefore was carried out in broad strokes and became increasingly subjective as a result.
Additionally, not enough attention was paid to “working memory, attentional control and language processing as components of general intelligence. The relationship among the eight intelligences and various information processing capacities (e.g., attention, concentration, cognitive control and memory, etc.) needs further clarification.” (Shearer, Karanian, 2017) They further noted that “A review of the neural data for each intelligence by an expert review panel would go a long way toward evaluating and clarifying the neural architecture for the intelligences.” (Shearer, Karanian, 2017) In essence, specifically targeted research with increased statistical validity involved could yield results with greater reliability than what has been brought out to date.
In lacking scientific data, one next must wonder, if MI has been embraced with virtual universality in schools all over the world, what success does data suggest MI has enjoyed in education? For this effort, Dr. Gardner named multiple institutions he felt were following MI as he conceived of it Thanks for your note. “Unfortunately, I cannot make a reliable recommendation for a specific multiple intelligences school or program, as I don't monitor closely who is currently using the theory. In the past, I have recommended that people look into the practices of the New City School in St. Louis and the Key Learning Community in Indianapolis (which is now closed, but there is some information available on the web about its practices). The Colegi Montserrat in Barcelona, Spain, does a very good job of incorporating MI into its practices.” (Gardner, 2018)
Attempts were made to connect with the above-mentioned institutions, as well as other institutions and individuals publicized as Multiple Intelligences examplars: Sharon Elementary and San Jose Elementary in California, New School of Northern, and Thomas Hoerr, former director of the New School of Northern Virginia and author of many instructional materials based on MI, and Joanna Christodoulou, a doctoral student and instructor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Contact was only made with Steven Roushakes, currently the Director of the New School of Northern Virginia. Much of the work done at the New School derives itself from Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future, published in 2005, but they have been doing project-based learning for 30 years. Roushakes likes PBL because it is “about applying knowledge, given action to learning instead of transmitting facts, where are inert.” (Roushakes, 2018) They build projects around essential questions, fully facilitating discovery learning, culminating in presentations and the gathering of artifacts and data and portfolios that move with students from grade to grade. When they measure their data, as a college preparatory school, they make the most use of student success on the SAT & PSAT. They also track college acceptance and receive anecdotal feedback from alumni who return frequently to the school to communicate with potential graduates.
Does any of what they do amount to evidence that employing the Theory of Multiple Intelligences in a school is conclusively effective? No. In fact, the application of PBL is the product of many theorists and more in line with Vygotsky’s theory, the Zone of Proximal Development, than anything directly connected to the work of Howard Gardner. The New School of Northern Virginia seems to be doing incredible work helping students learn to use their minds, but it is also a private school, and it is not obligated to report data to the state the way most schools in the United States do. Dr. Gardner himself mentioned that the Key Learning Community in Indianapolis had closed, but he did not explain why. It closed because, with 50% of its students proficient in reading and only 22% proficient, prior to shutting down, it failed to meet state standards, which suggests that a focused adherence to Multiple Intelligences Theory, about which The Key Learning Community directly consulted with Dr. Gardner, is not only lacking in evidence to demonstrate success but may have more data to prove the opposite. “When I showed Gardner copies of some of the exercises in Celebrating Multiple Intelligences [a book by Thomas Hoerr, former director of the New School of Northern Virginia, praised by Gardner], he (Gardner) scrutinized them carefully, frowned, and said, ‘The only answer I can give to this is: I would certainly not want to be in a school where a lot of time was spent doing these things.’” (Traub, 1998)
In the end, there is no scientific evidence to support the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, and there isn’t even agreement about what learning styles actually are. Some believe the differences in individuals are not in intelligence, but more obviously, ability. “Some in Gardner's corner, like his mentor and colleague Jerome Bruner, say they wish Gardner had employed a more neutral term like "aptitude." But if Gardner hadn't used "intelligence" he wouldn't be the colossal figure he is today.” (Traub) If the discussion had been about aptitudes, it would have been far more accurate, but it would only have served to reinforce very commonplace awareness among any group of educators who’ve been in the profession for any length of time. Explaining his motivation, Dr. Gardner states, “The expansion that I favor looks, in one direction, toward the biological and evolutionary roots of cognition and, in the other direction, toward cultural variations in cognitive competence.” (Gardner, 1983). But there are those who see Gardner as an intentional self-promoter. “Gardner had offered a vision of human nature that spoke eloquently to public disillusionment with the scientific, technocratic worldview.” (Traub) “Harold Stevenson, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, says, ‘What they're [supporters of MI] trying to say is, 'You may not be able to do academic things, but you move well, or you're very good at music or spatial intelligence.' Whatever Gardner himself intends, M.I. theory legitimizes the fad for "self-esteem," the unwillingness to make even elementary distinctions of value, the excessive regard for diversity, and the decline of diligence. (Traub) This may, indeed, have been what The Key Learning Community discovered, much to their dismay.
It is said that labeling learning intelligences causes teachers to pigeon hole kids and kids to pigeon hole themselves. Others balk at the notion that it is only Gardner’s theories seeming to guide efforts to differentiate instruction for students. Even Gardner himself has stepped back from his theory after the eight intelligences was expanded by other theorists and practitioners. In the plainest of language, he stated, “MI Theory is no longer the focus of my work.” (Gardner, 2018)
Criticisms of the Multiple Intelligence Theory hang over the work of Howard Gardner, but there can be no denying that the theory has become a mainstay of educational methods everywhere. No one becoming an educator or currently in the profession can go without a near daily exposure to the theory of Multiple Intelligences. Steven Roushakes offers a salvageable means by which we may revisit the theory of Multiple Intelligences today. “It’s not a pedagogy. It’s a philosophy that drives practice. There are essentially two Gardners, the one for MI and the one on the philosophy of education.” (Roushakes, 2018) As Gardner has moved on to very important work around ethics in education with the Good Project, it is probable even he might agree with this statement. If educators view MI as a guide to keep learning flexible, active and engaging, instead of exercising rote direct instruction, desks in rows, endless note-taking, with teachers as little more than providers of lifeless facts and students as no more than empty bowls awaiting academic porridge, we can better meet our students’ needs. As such a guideline, its impact in a classroom may be beneficial, but as the basis for school models, entire curriculum design, strict pedagogics, endless days of professional development, entire tomes of books on the subject, and systems of assessment, the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, lacking in scientific and statistical support, simply isn’t the panacea people have been lead to dogmatically believe it is. A more accurate title for his work would be the Hypothesis of Multiple Aptitudes, but one might imagine that this would not have made even close to the impression upon the world, garnering as many accolades or selling as many books, as a theory of multiple intelligences.
On a final note, when looking at a broader question, inspired by an investigation of Gardner’s Theory of Multiple intelligences, one may be left wondering whether or not psychology is an actual science, given that the rigor between it and what are termed the harder sciences is so different, Dr. Benner provides an effective answer. “it is a science. We desperately need to know in as rigorous a manner as possible about how our minds work. It wasn’t long ago that something earned the word “science” mostly for being a field where logic and testing were used carefully. This is partly why we can name things like Computer Science or Political Science, which are both entirely human-constructed. Our brains, at least relative to those two fields, have come about naturally. The fact that it’s really hard to study doesn’t change the fact that knowing how we think, and as is most relevant to educational psychology how we can change our thinking, is to know arguably about the very most important thing which makes us human.” (Benner, 2018)
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