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Interdisciplinary learning encourages students to recognize the relationships among various areas of study and how different disciplines require the use of different intelligences.
In Sound Ways of Knowing, Barrett, McCoy, and Veblen (1997) suggest that the capable learner possesses a natural "tendency to connect, relate, associate, and join features of experience, and that tendency leads to new understanding" (p. 15). This new understanding "constitutes the fundamental rationale for interdisciplinary study in schools" (p. 14) for the inclusion of integrated learning suggested in the National Standards for Arts Education (MENC, 1994). Interdisciplinary learning encourages students to recognize the relationships among various areas of study and how different disciplines require the use of different intelligences. Because individuals acquire knowledge in different ways for each discipline, the multiple intelligences approach to learning can facilitate an interdisciplinary, integrated curriculum where many disciplines are presented in relationship to each other. Howard Gardner's Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (Gardner, 1993) challenges teachers to convey content through a variety of media using different areas of students' cognitive strength. Gardner identifies seven and possibly eight different intelligences through which learners acquire knowledge:
Linguistic intelligence
Logical-mathematical intelligence
Spatial intelligence
Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence
Musical intelligence
Interpersonal intelligence
Intrapersonal intelligence
Naturalist intelligence.
Reflecting on Gardner's multiple intelligences theory, Thomas Armstrong asserts that "many current alternative educational models essentially are multiple-intelligence systems using different terminologies (and with varying levels of emphasis on the different intelligences)" (p. 39). Armstrong specifically identifies cooperative learning, whole language instruction, and "suggestopedia" as multiple intelligence-based models. Georgi Lozanoz (1978), the creator of "suggestopedia," claims that learning restraints and inhibitions resulting from conformity to social norms may be recalled and reestablished by the power of suggestion, thereby enhancing learning capabilities.These interdisciplinary approaches, which focus on connecting subject areas, all acknowledge and recognize the unique learning styles embodied and described in the theory of multiple intelligences.
A model of the multiple intelligences approach to learning via an interdisciplinary curriculum exists at the Missouri Fine Arts Academy (MFAA). Academy students experience a broad spectrum of interdisciplinary study, including music, dance, theater, and visual art. All of Gardner's eight intelligences are used in one way or another when MFAA students study and perform the arts. Begun in 1995, the MFAA is funded...