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Interpersonal Intelligence
Group Learning
On your child's report card, you might have noticed a space near the end labeled something like "works well with others," where the teacher can check off "always, sometimes," or "rarely." That's as far as many schools go to evaluate a student's Interpersonal Intelligence. That is unfortunate, according to educator Thomas R. Hoerr, Ph.D., because of the personal intelligences factor in almost everything we do.
The degree of a person's Interpersonal Intelligence helps determine how easily she relates to others, and how well he can cooperate with and influence others. "The core capacity here is the ability to notice and make distinctions among other individuals and, in particular, among their moods, temperaments, motivations, and intentions," says Harvard University professor of education Howard Gardner in his book Frames of Mind (Basic Books, 1993).
On the Web site for New City School, where Hoerr is director, guidelines help parents identify Interpersonal Intelligence in their children. According to the New City site, Interpersonally gifted children can differentiate and label the moods, feelings and intention of others, which allows them to empathize easily. They understand stereotypes and prejudices, and discourage put-downs and ethnic and gender jokes. They often offer to help others problem-solve, and can compromise and negotiate solutions on their own.
They can also organize group interaction and generate a positive atmosphere that helps focus the group's efforts. Their natural leadership abilities help others work at a higher level. They accept constructive feedback and act on it, and are good at verbally communicating their own needs, confronting and being assertive as appropriate.
At New City School, where they have been working with Howard Gardner's theories since 1988 and consider the personal intelligences the most important to overall success, much work is done in groups. But these are different from the "group projects" of traditional classrooms. "It's not enough to just have kids working in a group," says Hoerr, whose latest book is How to Become a Multiple Intelligences School (ASCD, 2000). New City students initially spend time defining what makes a good group member—someone who listens actively to others, responds well to criticism, etc. This is reinforced often, with students spending time daily assessing how they did as a team member.
Even if your child's school doesn't operate this way, you can do things at home to help nurture your child's Interpersonal Intelligence. Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D., author of several books on education, says in his latest, In Their Own Way (Putnam, 2000), that children gifted with Interpersonal Intelligence benefit from "dynamic interaction with other people." He suggests providing games to share with friends and opportunities to teach other children. "Let them get involved in community activities, clubs, committees, after-school programs and volunteer organizations. Have frequent family discussions and problem-solving sessions. Work together on group projects," Armstrong advises.
"Too often, everything goes through a linguistics filter," says Hoerr, adding that while this works well for Linguistically intelligent kids, others might miss out. And even the kids with more academics-friendly intelligences will miss out without help to develop these all-important personal intelligences.
Kinds of Multiple Intelligences
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