http://www.benwilbrink.nl/literature/sternberg.htm

Individual differences

Intelligence & Thinking Styles in the work of Robert J. Sternberg

Ben Wilbrink

Materials in preparation of the seminar at the Stedelijk Gymnasium november 23

A nice introduction to the work of Sternberg and of the theme of this seminar — if you are in the mood for just a little bit of hmework for coming Tuesday — is a Sternberg interview about his new book College Admissions for the 21st Century Harvard University Press. It is all about the narrow conception of what intelligence is, and what a broader conception, including creative and practical intelligence as well as wisdom, can do for instruction, assessment, and admissions. The fact that the book is about American admissions to selective and elite universities might seem strange, because the theme of our seminar definitely is what role individual differences in intelligence and thinking styles play in instruction and assessment in European continental secondary education. Sternberg uses the admissions process to highlight his theories about intelligence and thinking styles. All the more so because he has been using his theories to reform the admissions process of Tufts University, a highly selective elite university, and recently of Oklahoma University, not an elite university but a land grant university and therefore having a mission to provide access. These experiments are the Kaleidoscope Project (at Tufts U. and Oklahoma U.) , an outgrowth of Sternberg’s earlier Rainbow Project. Sternberg even moved from Yale U. to Tufts, and later to Oklahoma, to keep an eye on the admissions process under the Kaleidoscope Project. About American admissions to colleges and universities you should know that there are many institutions that have an open access policy, or that otherwise accept almost all applicants.

Robert J. Sternberg (2008). Assessing what matters. Educational Leadership, 65, number 4 Informative Assessment, 20-26. pdf [Sternberg gives a number of such examples]

See also: Melinda Burns (September 19, 2010). Testing College Applicants’ Wisdom, Common Sense. Miller-McCune magazine webpage [reviews Sternberg’ new book College Admissions for the 21st Century

I received Sternberg’s book only on last thursday. I must say that I am impressed. It is almost a political pamphlet about the state of testing and assessment by one of the leaders in the field of psychological testing and theory. The verdict is: assessment, testing, as well as instruction itself, are too narrowly focused on analytical capabilities and knowledge. The field has not really known any progress since the early 20th century. Urgently needed is more recognition of individual differences in intellectual functioning, and the immense potential recognition of these differences will have for the quality of instruction, and the power of alumni to contribute to society in meaningful ways. Sternberg is worried about the highly educated leaders, selected on the basis of analytical intellectual abilities, that have caused the world wide financial crisis. They have used their highly analytical capabilities to enrich themselves, not for the common good. Wisdom lost.

In the classroom

I think this short article (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2002 pdf) is a good introduction to Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence or theory of successful intelligence and how it can be applied in the classroom. Section captions are

• The Theory of Successful Intelligence: A Capsule Description
• Classroom Applications
• Teaching analytically
• Teaching creatively
• Teaching practically
• Some Supporting Research
• Why Teaching for Successful Intelligence Works
• Conclusion

Table 1 above lists some of the activities possible. Add: give examples of problematic situations and events in education or educational assesssment that might be explained by Sternberg’s claim that creative and practical abilities in education have been severely disregarded.

Wisdom is missing in table 1. Wisdom: think of applying Sternberg’s intelelctual abilities for the common good, in the short as well as the long term. Look for application that is supplemental to common practice, not necessarily instead of common practice in school and classroom.

Not really a claim, but an admonition. The text is adapted from the instruction in the Tufts University admissions procedure for writing an optional essay of 250 to 400 words on one of the listed topics. The essays will be scored on strong points in the practical, creative or wisdom sense of Sternberg’ The results on the optional essay will be used only in a positive way, depending on the quality of the essay. (The Kaleidoscope Project) In this way, the diversity in the group admitted (some 15.000 every year!) is higher, students now being admitted who wouldn’t have made it on memory tasks and analytical abilities alone. Many of these students are from minority groups.

What would Sternberg’s theory of triarchic intelligence — he calls it now his theory of successful intelligence — change to the world, if implemented in education or the workplace?

Claim two is kind of a description of my state of mind in the process of reading his 2010 book College Admissions for the 21st Century (and therefore not a claim at all?). Let us first be clear about the significance of the subject of the book: American college admissions. What is the connection to Continental European secondary education?

Superficially very different education systems nevertheless can be much like each other in the way individual differences are treated in instruction as well as in selection. The claim is the work of Sternberg on American college admissions is highly relevant also to the selectivity issues in the Dutch education system.

This analytical intelligence is about reasoning and critical thinking. It typically is tested by ‘intelligence tests’.

The Dutch test that is used at 11⁺, the Cito Eindtoets Basisonderwijs, purportedly measures knowledge and skills acquired in primary education. If the American ACT and SAT really behave like intelligence tests, what do you think the ‘real behavior’ of the Cito test at 11⁺ to be?

Why is it a problem that these so called achievement tests really are behaving like intelligence tests (and therefore better had be called tests of intelligence)? See the next claim.

The difficulty is, of course, that the absence of creative, practical and wisdom-based abilities in our education system is not evidently visible. One has to look for things that are missing, a terribly difficult job, made even more difficult by the many mechanisms and powerplays that attempt to hide this gaping hole in our education. An important factor here is the existing class system, as Wes Holleman would call it: the powerful classes thrive by this kind of education and will invest heavily in resiting change in the direction of education that is more comprehensive in terms of Sternberg’ (or Gardner’s, and others’ too) intelligences, better serving people from minority groups and powerless or at least less powerful classes.

Sternberg, or at least his collaborators, have been testing the claim experimentally.

Sternberg’ theory of thinking styles — also called cognitive styles, or intellectual styles — is one among many such theories, he calls his theory the Theory of Mental Self-Government, meant as a metaphor. Table II summarizes the styles recorgnized in this theory. A test of thinking styles, the Sternberg-Wagner Thinking Styles Inventory, is available online. A sample (fictitious) of a report is shown below.

These theories are rather weak, because the field is not clearly defined as either intelligence or personality theory, but something in between. Thinking styles are important in education because students differ in their favorite styles, as do their teachers. Therefore conflicts between students and their teachers are possible only because of conflicting thinking styles. There is worse to come: instructional methods and techniques of assessment might conflict with the favorite styles of students, or of teachers. Sternberg likes to start his publications on styles with the following personal anecdote illustrating these points:

In the case above, Sternberg had written a creative essay, assuming a reproductive essay surely was not the thing the professor would expect. Not so. In a certain sense, multiple choice tests force students to be reproductive in their answers.

The first objection to doing so is that testing is an invasion of privacy. You need the consent of the parents and the students themselves. A good reason not to test students is because there does not seem to be a good reason to test them on styles in the first place. What would you like to do, once the testresults are in? Do you think you are any good at interpreting these results? And if so, do you think you will be able to remember all these individual profiles? And if you would be able to remember them, why do you thin a particle student’s profile today to be approximately the same tomorrow?

Be careful to use a broad range of methods of instruction and assessment, thus enabling students to make the most of their strong points, in this way compensating for their weaker points. Also, diversifying will diminish the possibilities for certain students to be systematically handicapped by particular methods of instruction and assessment.

This page tries to present a summary of the work of Robert J. Sternberg and his colleagues on the triarchic theory of intelligence, on cognitive styles, and on applications of theoretical insights in real life situations such as college admissions and the classroom. One reason to choose the work of Sternberg is that his research is not restricted to psychological theory. In his research he is building bridges between the real world of school, work and life in general, and the theories about individual differences such as abilities, intelligence, and thinking styles.

Examples and anecdotal materials

Literature

Li-fang Zhang, Robert J. Sternberg & Stephen Rayner (Eds.) (2012). Handbook of Intellectual Styles. Preferences in Cognition, Learning and Thinking. Springer. Scribd full text

PART I. INTRODUCTION
1. Intellectual Styles: Challenges, Milestones, and Agenda 1
Li-fang Zhang, Robert J. Sternberg, and Stephen Rayner
PART II. FOUNDATIONS OF INTELLECTUAL STYLES
2. A Historical Review of the Styles Literature 21
Tine Nielsen
3. Understanding an Integrated Theory of Intellectual Styles:
Moving From Models to Measures and Meaning 47
Stephen Rayner, John Roodenburg, and Esther Roodenburg
4. Measurement and Assessment of Intellectual Styles 67
Simon Cassidy
PART III. DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLECTUAL STYLES
5. The Etiology of Intellectual Styles: Contributions From
Intelligence and Personality 89
Samuel D. Mandelman and Elena L. Grigorenko
6. Demographic Characteristics and Intellectual Styles 109
Seval Fer
7. Culture and Intellectual Styles 131
Li-fang Zhang and Robert J. Sternberg
PART IV. INTELLECTUAL STYLES IN RELATION TO ALLIED CONSTRUCTS
8. Metacognition and Styles 153
Eugene Sadler-Smith
9. Intelligence and Intellectual Styles 173
Adrian Furnham
10. Creativity and Intellectual Styles 193
Kyle A. Hartley and Jonathan A. Plucker
11. Personality and Intellectual Styles 209
John Roodenburg, Esther Roodenburg, and Stephen Rayner
PART V. INTELLECTUAL STYLES AND PERFORMANCE
12. Academic Achievement and Intellectual Styles 233
Weiqiao Fan and Yunfeng He
13. Learner Developmental Outcomes and Intellectual Styles 251
Melissa I. Gebbia and Andrea Honigsfeld
14. Intellectual Styles, Management of Careers,
and Improved Work Performance 273
Steven J. Armstrong, Beatrice I. J. M. van der Heijden, and Eugene Sadler-Smith
PART VI. APPLICATIONS OF INTELLECTUAL STYLES
15. Applications of Styles in Educational Instruction and Assessment 295
Carol Evans and Michael Waring
16. Understanding Styles in Organizational Behaviors:
A Summary of Insights and Implications 329
Eva Cools
17. Intellectual Styles in Members of Different Professions 353
Olesya Blazhenkova and Maria Kozhevnikov
18. Intellectual Styles of Exceptional Learners 373
David W. Chan
PART VII. INTEGRATION, CONCLUSIONS, AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
19. Conclusion: Back to the Future 395
Stephen Rayner, Li-fang Zhang, and Robert J. Sternberg
Epilogue 415
Robert J. Sternberg, Li-fang Zhang, and Stephen Rayner

Reading list (popular materials) (see also the references in the text above

Robert J. Sternberg (2008). Increasing fluid intelligence is possible after all. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 May 13; 105(19): 6791–6792. html

Robert J. Sternberg (2008). Assessing what matters. Educational Leadership, 65, number 4 Informative Assessment, 20-26. pdf

Robert J. Sternberg (1997). What does it mean to be smart? Educational Leadership, 54, number 6 How children learn, 20-24. pdf

Robert J. Sternberg (1980). Sketch of a componential subtheory of human intelligence. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3, 573–584. Reprinted in James C. Kaufman & Elena L. Grigorenko (Eds.) (2009). The essential Sternberg. Essays on intelligence, psychology, and education. Springer. pdf [as sample chapter]

Robert J. Sternberg , Christina R. Bonney , Liane Gabora & Maegan Merrifield (2012): WICS: A Model for College and University Admissions. Educational Psychologist, 47, 30-41. abstract

See also the Sternberg publications file here

  http://www.benwilbrink.nl/publicaties/10SternbergSocrates.htm http://goo.gl/oYDjj