Uncovering Students' Analytic, Practical and Creative Intelligences: One School's Application of Sternberg's Triarchic Theory

School Administrator, Jan, 1998 by Lynn English

When our North Carolina, inner-city, magnet elementary school applied Robert Steinberg's triarchic theory of intelligence to curriculum, instruction and assessment, teachers began to reconsider the ways their students were "smart" in ways unacknowledged by conventional school standards. Several years of concerted efforts on school improvement now have raised test scores, improved teacher morale and driven up demand for enrollment in magnet spaces. Narrowing the performance gap between majority and minority students has been our greatest achievement.

As the flagship magnet school of the Wake County, N.C., system, Hunter Elementary faced multiple challenges. Chief among them was how to reach its increasingly diverse student population of 700 students, 42 percent of whom are minority. The school's aging physical structure was situated in a neighborhood facing significant inner-city crime. Our task seemed monumental.

I am proud to say our faculty not only accepted the challenge, but rose to it. They took risks and re-examined old perceptions of intelligence and instruction and how these perceptions might not be serving students' innate strengths. They replaced these perceptions with high expectations for all students. Today, we have become a successful learning environment for all students where the faculty has begun to learn and use new instructional methods that give each child a time to shine.

Teaching to a student's often-hidden strengths means teachers must work more like the master sculptor Michelangelo did. They must uncover the sculpture (intelligence) that lies hidden beneath a slab of rough-hewn marble (our students), waiting to be released. Like master sculptors, their task is at times frustrating and exhausting, requiring patience and their own application of analytic, creative and practical intelligence.

The faculty's hard work has paid off. Our school earned exemplary status from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction for the 1996-1997 school year based on students' improved test performance over one year. Eligible staff members also received incentive pay rewards as a result of the test scores.

A Theory Emerges

Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence is not an expensive program that comes with packaged materials. It is a belief system that drives how a school makes decisions and approaches instruction.

Sternberg's theory presupposes that students exhibit at least three kinds of intelligence: creative, practical and analytical. Whereas schools have traditionally focused on memory and analytical methods and not given credence to creative and practical smartness of students, Sternberg advocates a different approach. He believes we should encourage children to recognize and maximize their leading intelligence and includes creativity and practical intelligences as pivotal goals.

Creative activities relate to the abilities to create, invent, imagine, design and ask questions that begin with "what if" or "suppose that?" Practical activities are designed around the abilities to apply, show how you can use and make things work in the real world. Analytical activities require more than mere memorization, focusing instead on comparing, analyzing, evaluating, critiquing, justifying and judging concepts or ideas.

Leadership and Instruction

Staff development was key to the process. During in-service programs, teachers experienced creative, practical and analytical activities, using them as a lens to look at homework policies and practices. Teachers began by reflecting on some extra work at home they had completed over the past week.

After reflecting on their personal homework, the staff analyzed their homework policies and then considered the emotions they had felt about completing their own homework. Then staff analyzed the homework assignments collected for a week by each classroom, which were placed by grade levels on tables. The staff analyzed the flow of what children had to do for homework across the whole school and completed "reflection worksheets" that evaluated homework assignments for creative, practical and analytic activities. Afterward teachers at each grade level shared responses and created new homework guidelines after weighing their own feelings about the work they did at home.

This staff development exercise used creative, practical and analytic skills as a model for teachers to consider what is asked of children in the three areas. Providing balanced experiences for the students and a "time to shine" encouraged teachers to allow children opportunity for choice in how and what they would do for assignments.

Instructional lessons and units also have changed. Not surprisingly, teachers tended to teach to their own intelligence strength. Staff development has helped faculty teach to all three intelligences.

Instruction begins with teachers introducing students to material in a way that children can personally connect with the content to be learned. Beginning with the familiar and building on their understanding supports students' understanding. Analytic activities are provided after the basic content is taught. Students then are provided experiences in the practical application and creative intelligence areas. As a result of teaching to all three intelligences, students are experiencing a time to shine in their dominant intelligence as well as developing skills in the other two areas.