Multiple Intelligences: Effective Learning and Teaching Strategies

   1 INTRODUCTION Teaching would be much easier, and achieving significant educational attainments would be simpler, if everyone learned in the same way. Alas not everyone does! Nowadays, in our schools there is a growing diversity of students with different social, economic and cultural backgrounds and this fact products diverse ways of thinking, learning and behaving. In the same classroom it is very likely to find learners with different kinds of abilities or disabilities. Even students with the same background perceive and process information differently. As a result of this, school systems that rely primarily on teaching through the spoken and written word do not longer reach all students. In fact, people do not take information in the same way. Some students can learn effectively by listening, and they are ‘better off’ in a traditional classroom setting, where information is mainly presented orally. However, students whose stronger learning channel is auditory are less than 15% of the population 1 . On the other hand, students who demonstrate a visual learning style are about 40% of the population. Learning to them is easier through the use of illustrations, charts, or diagrams. Kinaesthetic students form around 45% of the population. They need to manipulate ideas and abstractions in their hands before fully understand them. Besides, there are some students (called ‘field independent’) that follow directions easily, and they think in a more linear, sequential, detailed-oriented way and some others need to see the whole picture before they can attend to the details. In this dissertation we will take into account all the diversities in learning styles in order to fully understand a new concept such as Personalised Learning -extremely important in the United Kingdom. After defining what Personalisation means and discussing some learning types, we will shed a light on some effective intervention strategies -more teacher-oriented as well as some valuable learning strategies -more student-oriented. Thus, we will give discuss Questioning as a crucial part of Assessment for Learning. Nevertheless, our research work aims at exploring how schools, in in particular in the UK, undertake Personalisation delivering it. In fact, all children and young people, whatever their starting point is, need to fulfil their potential as learners. Hence, in the second chapter of our work, we will point out how in the UK Questioning and Differentiation seem to be crucial part of the curriculum as well as a chief educational issue, whereas in the Italian schools we have experienced a common ground to learning styles and abilities in the inclusion of arts in education –we will give example through our teaching units on music and cinema.                                                             1  from http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/front_strategies.html