Multiple Intelligence Theory Activities in the Middle School English as a Second Language (ESL) Classroom and the Impact on Student Perception and Engagement

In 1983, Howard Gardner published his Theory of Multiple Intelligences and detailed seven distinct intelligence areas. He extended his theory into the classroom and asserted that every student has their own unique gifts and talents which they bring to the classroom. Despite these contributions to pedagogy, schools continue to mainly focus on teaching curriculum standards concerned with matriculating pupils to the next grade level or getting them ready for the next standardized test. Authentic educational experiences accommodated to student needs are infrequently used in the modern classroom. Educational institutions largely cater to verbal-linguistic and mathematical intelligence profiles, despite many students having strengths in other areas. As a result, participation and student involvement in class are frequently low. The need to increase student involvement in the Year 9 ESL classroom and, more particularly, to consider closely students whose intelligence strengths were neither verbal-linguistic nor logical-mathematical, gave rise to the motivation for this project. The questions addressed for this action research were: What are student perceptions of multiple intelligence theory activities in the Year 9 ESL classroom? What is the impact of multiple intelligence activities on student engagement