Gardner-Inspired Dog-Legged Design of Teaching Materials: a Logical Illustration

We illustrate alternative instruments for teaching syllogistic logic, materials designed and investigated in our recent project funded by the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Philosophical & Religious Studies. The general aim of this project was fundamentally to re-think the design of teaching and learning technologies in the light of what is now known about cognitive deficits and in light of what Howard Gardner has termed ‘multiple intelligences’. The approach is that the exercise of re-conceiving the design of typical technology for teaching the subject, by considering students with a certain impairment, can translate into means for teaching all students in new, and possibly more effective, ways. What emerges is certainly not an algorithm but is a suggested recipe for designing innovatory teaching materials that potentially promote deep (as opposed to superficial) learning, and engage the different ‘intelligences’ of the learner, right across the age spectrum, from nursery to university.

There is an abundance of philosophical problems associated with this enterprise: What is deep learning and how do we assess whether it has been achieved? Is Gardner's theory an amateurish exercise in taxonomy or is it theoretically well-founded, evidence-based and with real practical implications, especially for teaching and learning? More concretely, we are pleased to report on how the subject centre project has paved the way for an ‘impact’ project funded in the first half of 2011 by the University of Kent Innovation and Enterprise unit, seeking to apply the design principle to the teaching of other subjects and other levels of education, engaging teachers across these spectrums. After a brief presentation of the progress of this work, for half of the allotted session time, we shall invite the audience to engage in open discussion both about the issues raised but also with a view to the prospects of generating new designs of devices and materials for teaching.