HOW TO OBSERVE CHILDREN’S INTELLIGENCES:
THE ITALIAN EXPERIENCE Prof. Paola Nicolini
Department of Education and Training Sciences - University of Macerata (Italy)
HOW TO OBSERVE CHILDREN’S INTELLIGENCES:
THE ITALIAN EXPERIENCE Prof. Paola Nicolini
Department of Education and Training Sciences - University of Macerata (Italy)
Four reasons to adopt Multiple Intelligence Theory
in education and teaching To build educators’ and teachers’ framework
for understanding children’s pluralistic behaviours * improve the chances that teachers will regard the whole range of children’s cognition as significant * does not require changing the organization,
space, schedule or adults’ role HOW TO OBSERVE CHILDREN’S INTELLIGENCES:
THE ITALIAN EXPERIENCE Prof. Paola Nicolini
nicolini@unimc.it
Four reasons to adopt Multiple Intelligence Theory
in education and teaching To offer an environment and systematic suggestions
for developing the whole range of abilities * the educative classroom context has to be equipped
with a variety of physical, cultural, and social affordances
to engage the range of children’s strengths HOW TO OBSERVE CHILDREN’S INTELLIGENCES:
THE ITALIAN EXPERIENCE Prof. Paola Nicolini
nicolini@unimc.it
Four reasons to adopt Multiple Intelligence Theory
in education and teaching To build multifaceted profiles that respect
individual children’s different abilities * documenting children’s specific behaviors,
in order to build a holistic vision of children’s competences * offering a context to engage all the intelligences and also systematically observing children within this context educators and teachers need deeper knowledge of MI and greater competence
in relating children’s observable actions to their probable underlying abilities HOW TO OBSERVE CHILDREN’S INTELLIGENCES:
THE ITALIAN EXPERIENCE Prof. Paola Nicolini
nicolini@unimc.it
HOW TO OBSERVE CHILDREN’S INTELLIGENCES:
THE ITALIAN EXPERIENCE Four reasons to adopt Multiple Intelligence Theory
in education and teaching To remediate weak areas in order to balance children’s profile A fourth reason to apply MIT is to draw on children’s profiles to promote greater balance in their development (at least in the Italian educative culture), that is to say to adopt bridging strategies.
The role of observation process * Table 1: Observation text examples can be useful to develop a training model towards the acquisition
of competences for teachers and educators in observing child through MI HOW TO OBSERVE CHILDREN’S INTELLIGENCES:
THE ITALIAN EXPERIENCE Prof. Paola Nicolini
nicolini@unimc.it
C. Spatial intelligence 6 months
h 10:30
Location: section Spatial activity: the educator spreads a number of coloured balls on the floor, letting the children follow them with their eyes. C. watches the balls showed by the educator. He shifts his gaze up and down. He follows the trajectories of some balls on the floor.
C. seems able to orient his gaze in order to follow the movements of objects 13 months
h 10:20
Location: hall The teacher asks the children to move to the section of the infants for the activity. C. smiles and heads straight for room.
C. shows to know the location of the named room. He confidently moves into the school 27 months
h 10:00
Location: class A sheet with a grid is delivered to each child, then two-tone cardstock squares are made available.
C. notices the paper and then spontaneously attacks each square within its own space in the grid.
C. seems to take into account the grid and the coloured boundaries 32 months
h 10:50
Location: section Children are engaged in an activity with geometric shapes-square like triangle, trapezium and circle. C. recognizes the forms and pastes them in the corresponding places C. shows to recognize shapes and is precise in outline HOW TO OBSERVE CHILDREN’S INTELLIGENCES:
THE ITALIAN EXPERIENCE Prof. Paola Nicolini
nicolini@unimc.it
The role of the observation process * Table 2: Qualitative overview of a child development
within personal intelligences
can be useful to develop a training model towards the acquisition
of competences for teachers and educators in observing child through MI HOW TO OBSERVE CHILDREN’S INTELLIGENCES:
THE ITALIAN EXPERIENCE Prof. Paola Nicolini
nicolini@unimc.it
Paola, the sentence above unclear. Do you mean: incorporating observation in teacher training programs fosters an emphasis on helping educators gain skills in observing children’s strengths and debolezze? (NB: we generally don’t use both the words “educators” and “teachers” together; for us, teachers are a subcategory of educators, but are often used interchangeably)
C. Spatial intelligence 6 months
h 09:20
Location: meeting room A. is sitting in a little lawn chair. An educator is next to him and A. is attentively observing her. As soon as the educator of the section enters in the room A. immediately lights up, smiling and waving his arms and legs.
A. seems to recognize the teacher and to show pleasure in seeing her 13 months
h 12:30
Location: meeting room It is the time of sleep. A. is lying on a cot, and is waiting to be rocked. A baby is next to him. He observes her for few minutes then starts to cuddle her. When the child is about to fall asleep, A. gives a kiss on her forehead.
A. shows friendliness towards the babies 25 months
h 10:10
Location: Section The educator calls a child at a time to do an activity. After his turn A. remains near to the table and, as a child approaches it to do the work, he picks up the apron and handed it to her/him. When he hears a child asking to go to the bathroom, A. comes to the door and held it open.
A. often shows spontaneous consideration to the needs of others 32 months
h 17:10
Location: meeting room We are in the meeting room, A. is close to a baby who is crying. A. gives him a small bell, saying, "Don’t worry! I'm here! Your mother is going to arrive in few minutes!" A. shows empathy and seems to be able to take care of a friend HOW TO OBSERVE CHILDREN’S INTELLIGENCES:
THE ITALIAN EXPERIENCE Prof. Paola Nicolini
nicolini@unimc.it
The role of the observation process * Table 3: Qualitative synchronic overview of a child development can be useful to develop a training model towards the acquisition
of competences for teachers and educators in observing child through MI HOW TO OBSERVE CHILDREN’S INTELLIGENCES:
THE ITALIAN EXPERIENCE Prof. Paola Nicolini
nicolini@unimc.it
T.M. Musical intelligence Naturalistic intelligence Bodily kinaesthetic intelligence 6 months
h 10:30
Location: section
The teacher presents a noisy toy to T. He squeezes it in his hands, smiles and begins to shake it.
T. repeats the action several times, smiling at every time the toy produces a noise.
T. seems to like sounds and enjoy noises h 10:30
Location: section
The educator offers the children a naturalistic activity, providing them with a bunch of different herbs such as rosemary, mint, lemon balm, chives, in order to observe, to touch and to smell them. T. grabs two sprigs of rosemary, one in each hand. He passes them on his face, keeps them, touching the leaves with the tips of his fingers.
T. shows interest exploring scented plants h 09:50
Location: section
The teacher is doing bubbles. T. follows the trajectories from the top to the bottom. When the bubbles are at hand, T. tries to grab them with hands. He breaks a few and smile.
T. demonstrates an eye-hand coordination HOW TO OBSERVE CHILDREN’S INTELLIGENCES:
THE ITALIAN EXPERIENCE Prof. Paola Nicolini
nicolini@unimc.it
Web-Ob for MI * tutorial package Web-Ob automatically organizes educators’ qualitative observations
to facilitate their use of this data. * designed to acquire competences in the observation method
* facilitate the transition from a naive approach to an expert one
in the observation activity
* short training course articulated in 8 activities
* synthetic theoretical paper
* list of figures HOW TO OBSERVE CHILDREN’S INTELLIGENCES:
THE ITALIAN EXPERIENCE Prof. Paola Nicolini
nicolini@unimc.it
Web-Ob for MI * store information and retrieve them from the available database Web-Ob automatically organizes educators’ qualitative observations
to facilitate their use of this data.
* how many observations a specific user carried out and accomplished
* how many children were observed
* how many times a child was observed
* how many times a child was observed with respect to a specific finality
* the chronology of observations on a child
* info on the contexts frequently chosen by the users to observe
* etc. etc. HOW TO OBSERVE CHILDREN’S INTELLIGENCES:
THE ITALIAN EXPERIENCE Prof. Paola Nicolini
nicolini@unimc.it
Web-Ob for MI * the community part of the program Web-Ob automatically organizes educators’ qualitative observations
to facilitate their use of this data. * consider the knowledge building process as a social one
* possibility to make use of collaborative devices
such as blogs, web forums, social networks, wiki HOW TO OBSERVE CHILDREN’S INTELLIGENCES:
THE ITALIAN EXPERIENCE Prof. Paola Nicolini
nicolini@unimc.it
THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION Q&A HOW TO OBSERVE CHILDREN’S INTELLIGENCES:
THE ITALIAN EXPERIENCE Prof. Paola Nicolini
nicolini@unimc.it
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