Teaching intelligence

Author(s): Grotzer, T. A.

Journal/Book: Amer Psychol. 1997; 52: 750 First St NE, Washington, DC 20002-4242. Amer Psychological Assoc. 1125-1133.

Abstract: Efforts to improve human intelligence and thinking have a long history and a lively presence in a number of programs and approaches. Many studies have demonstrated that targeted interventions can teach people to think better within particular subject matters and in some general ways as well, with transfer beyond the kinds of tasks used in instruction and moderate persistence. Effective interventions reorganize learners' thinking with strategies, metacognition, and other means, not just practice-up skills. However do such improvements genuinely constitute gains in intelligence? They only sometimes and modestly advance intelligence in the sense of IQ, but the authors argue that this essentialist sense of intelligence is flawed. Taking a more eclectic view of intelligence, the interventions reviewed here and others like them teach intelligence because they provide people with the psychological resources to think better across a range of contexts.

Note: Review Perkins DN, Harvard Univ, Grad Sch Educ, Longfellow Hall 315, Cambridge,MA 02138 USA

Keyword(s): CHILDREN; THINKING; INTERVENTION; ADOLESCENTS; MECHANISMS

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