Chapter 10: Abstract and Reflection

Abstract
The theory of multiple intelligences is a great way to teach material to students. However using the theory in assessing students is also the best way to capture their understanding of the material. Unfortunately, education for the most part, is still stuck in the rut of standardized testing. The two best ways to assess students is through direct observation and documentation. There are a few communities, schools, or organizations that have attempted to change over. Some examples at different levels in the educational journey are Project Spectrum, for preschoolers, PIFS programs, for middle school, and the Arts PROPEL in high school. The Key Learning Community is a kindergarten through graduation school district that documents students’ progressive learning through video tapes. Along with video tapes, the chapter also suggests several other ways best suited to document student learning. Those ways would be through the use of student self assessment, rubrics, and portfolios. A method of grading portfolios is by the Five C’s of Portfolio Development: celebration, cognition, communication, cooperation, and competency. All of these methods allow for the assessment of the two most important types of learning, competency and ipsative. Competency measures how much the student learned and ipsative compares the student’s learning or progression of learning against the student’s own work. These are the most effective forms of assessment using the MI theory according to this chapter.

Reflection
As a class we found the Huck Finn examples especially relevant and helpful. The difference between the standardized test way of assessing the students’ knowledge of Huck Finn and the MI way of assessing is so stark that the reader draws conclusions about the usefulness of MI assessments almost instantly. The need to assess students through the MI theory was agreed upon by everyone in the class. However, standardized tests are still a reality and informally administering parts of standardized tests can help students get over test anxiety.

As a class we had a lot to say about how MI assessment will affect us as teachers and how it will affect our students. In general this changed the way we previously thought about assessment and how we plan on assessing in the future. Apparently this chapter laid out quite a persuasive argument because it convinced the whole class. A main component to this persuasion was the fact that assessing this way is so much fairer to students. We all can remember the teacher that gave the test which covered material we had never seen before and we can all remember how that felt. The concept of assessing how the information was taught seems to be obvious but so many teachers do not do that. This theory also gives the students the opportunity to choose how they want to be assessed. By giving the students choices on how they want to show their mastery of the material, this involves them in their own education. This can either allow the students’ to practice more than one of their intelligences or allow them to use their strongest intelligence. This makes the assessment more about what the students’ know and understand than whether the student can figure out what the teacher wanted. The class found that the MI portfolio idea is worth lifting from this book. This portfolio is helpful not only to show the students what they learned but also to teachers the students will have in the future. Lastly, a consensus was reached that the MI theory will help students think more deeply and more creatively than by using standard assessment practices.