Intelligence…
‘The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills’. New Oxford Dictionary of English
‘Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience…’ (Gottfredson, 1997)
‘The ability to use memory, knowledge, experience, understanding, reasoning, imagination and judgement in order to solve problems and adapt to new situations’. Allwords Dictionary
‘The ability to learn, understand, and think about things’. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
‘…intelligence (means) the ability of an organism to solve new problems…’ W.V. Bingham
I like a definition, and there appear to be as many definitions of intelligence as there are dictionaries and psychologists who ponder about the subject. Many of the definitions are similar and are about the ability to achieve goals (including learning goals) in a wide range of environments.
The American psychologist, Howard Gardner, upended these similar views of intelligence when, in 1983, he published ‘Frames of Mind’ outlining his theory of ‘Multiple intelligences’. Gardner argued that many things that had been previously been labelled as talents or skills or attributes, such as musical ability and the ability to get on with people, were in fact distinct ‘intelligences’. The thesis proved very popular but it has since been discredited. And rightly so, I think.
Of the few definitions listed above, the Gottfredson one has gained wide acceptance among academics, and I like it.
The word ‘intelligent’ comes from the Latin word ‘intelligere’ meaning ‘to understand’ – this suggests that, at its root, ‘intelligence’ enables us to understand things.
It is common for psychologists and others to break down ‘general intelligence’ into ‘fluid intelligence’ and ‘crystallised intelligence’, so-labelled by Raymond Cattell in the 1960s. ‘Fluid intelligence’ is usually taken to mean our ability to comprehend, reason, and problem-solve, and it is argued that it is determined by our genes and may be fixed, or largely fixed, from birth; ‘crystallised intelligence’ is usually taken to mean the sum of our prior learning and past experiences – in other words: what we know.
For me, intelligence matters because how ‘intelligent’ we are is mostly about the quality and quantity of what we know and that is very malleable; we can quickly increase what we know – we can get smarter – by adding to our stock of knowledge. As teachers, we can do this for our students by making their acquisition of knowledge our key aim, and by helping them to ensure that what they learn sticks.
Whilst talking about knowledge, it’s worth remembering the ‘Matthew Effect’ of accumulated advantage (originally from Matthew 25:29 in the Bible): in school, the more knowledge our students have, the more knowledge they can get. A colleague of mine – KPa – calls it The Snowball Effect: picture yourself rolling a snowball through thick freshly-fallen snow; not only does snow stick to your snowball as you roll it – the bigger your snowball becomes, the more snow that sticks to it. And so it is with knowledge: the more we know, the greater becomes our capacity for knowledge.
Implications for teaching
As teachers we can, and we should:
1. Lay out precisely the knowledge that we want our students to acquire, in a logically-sequenced way; this activity is a key element of a ‘knowledge-rich curriculum’
2. Prioritise the acquisition of knowledge by adopting the teaching methods that are most likely to make knowledge stick – in other words, explicit instruction
3. Use the curriculum as the model of progression, and test students regularly to both check on and improve their progress: how much of the curriculum (or this bit of the curriculum) have they ‘got’? Help students fill the gaps uncovered by testing etc
4. Go back to the key learning, over time, with frequent retrieval practice – retrieval practice is the diet of learning champions
The good news is that we can all get ‘smarter’, by increasing our stock of knowledge. Knowledge is power that we can all have.
