Intelligence and Learning Styles

Enriching the Brain: How to Maximize Every Learner’s Potential
Eric Jensen, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006

A book for parents and educators, it has a good primer on recent brain research and the educational implications for all of us.

How the Brain Learns, Third Edition
David Sousa, Corwin Press, 2006

A book for teachers written in an easy to understand style, it may be of interest to some parents.

A Mind At A Time
Mel Levine, Simon & Shuster, 2002

The educator/parent companion to All Kinds of Minds, (a book that Bixby uses in 4th grade Group Time), this book explains ways of learning and how our attention control, memory, language, spatial/sequential, motor, and thinking systems effect how we learn best.  Has an extensive resource section.  This book is one of Bixby’s “touchstones” for the rubric we developed as part of our assessment process.
www.allkindsofminds.org and www.ldonline.org

 
Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life (Masterminds Series)
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1998

Flow (updated edition)

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 2002

 
Habits of Mind: A Developmental Series, Book 1 – Discovering & Exploring
Arthur Costa and Bena Kallick, Eds., Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 2000

This first book describes the 16 types of behavior, “habits of mind,” that can aid students and adults in school and life.  The habits are rooted in the theory of intelligence that posits it is a “multifaceted, malleable, flexible state.” The authors contend that a critical attribute of intelligence is not only having information but also knowing how and when to act on it. This book is one of Bixby’s “touchstones” for the rubric we developed as part of our assessment process. Student Book Lists and other materials can be linked through www.ascd.org and www.habits-of-mind.net

Intellectual Character: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Get It
Ron Ritchhart, Jossey-Bass: A Wiley Company, 2002

Focused on a dispositional view of intelligence (curiosity, open-mindedness) and the practices that support it, this book is one of Bixby’s “touchstones” for the rubric we developed as part of our assessment process.

 
Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century
Howard Gardner, Basic Books, 1999

This is an update of Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences.  More recent work on the theory and its applications is available at the Project Zero website.
www.pz.harvard.edu

So Each May Learn: Integrating Learning Styles & Multiple Intelligences
Harvey Silver, Richard Strong, Matthew Perini, Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 2000

For teachers, but has an excellent, brief introduction to the concepts of learning styles and multiple intelligences and how they integrate