128 – Assessing Student Attitudes and Student Understanding
Multiple Intelligences and Learning Statistics
W. Robert Stephenson
Iowa State University
In talking with statistics students how often have you heard; “I’m not going to do well in this class because I’m not good at math.�? Or during the course of a semester how often have you noticed how some students “get it� while others don’t? As instructors of statistics we teach to a wide variety of students; different preparation, different interests, different motivation, different intelligences. Traditionally intelligence is the ability to learn and apply knowledge. As such, a student’s intelligence could be described by a single measurable construct. Gardner (1983) took a broader view of intelligence and devised seven distinct categories, multiple intelligences, to explain different aspects of intelligence and how different people learn. In this paper we explore how certain intelligences are related to performance in an introductory statistics course. An individual can have strengths in some intelligences and weaknesses in others. However, each of the intelligences can be strengthened. We then look at several possibilities for strengthening the intelligences related to improved performance in the introductory statistics course.
