Chapter 7 - A Once and Future Developmental Psychologist

Summary

While not always faithful to the professional field of developmental psychology, Howard Gardner treasures the concept of development – which was introduced to him through the writings of Heinz Werner, and was embodied by his first teachers, Jerome Bruner, Erik Erikson, and Jean Piaget. As soon as he joined Project Zero, a research group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Gardner proposed that “participation in the arts” is a viable end-state for a developmental perspective; with Ellen Winner and other colleagues, he sought to lay out a “developmental psychology of the arts.” Drawing on various disciplines, Gardner then introduced the concept for which he is best known –multiple intelligences.  Ironically, “multiple intelligences” does not describe his own mind particularly well. Like most scholars and writers, he traffics in linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences.  Instead, his approach is better described as an effort to synthesize bodies of information in a way that is illuminating and that raises new questions, that he and his colleagues can ponder and pursue.