Howard Gardner and his colleagues wanted to determine how a child approached a task. To do this, they had to look at cognitive or working styles and intellectual capacities. The working styles describe how a child interacts with the materials of a content area. An example would be planning an activity, reflecting on a task, and the level of persistence. At the time, fifteen areas of cognitive ability and eighteen stylistic features are stressed.
The fifteen areas of cognitive ability examined in Project Spectrum are:
NUMBERS:
Number Concepts
Counting Skills
Use of Strategy etc.
SCIENCE:
Measure a child's mechanical ability
Logical Inferences
Generation of Hypothesis etc.
MUSIC:
The child's ability to maintain accurate pitch
Discrimination
Song recognition
LANGUAGE:
Vocabulary and Sentence Structure
Descriptive Language
Dialogue
Level of detail etc.
VISUAL ARTS:
Portfolios
Detail
Representation
Drawing etc.
MOVEMENT:
Dance
Creative Movement
Expressiveness
Body Control
Responsiveness to music etc.
SOCIAL:
Observe and Analyze
Interaction with Peers
Patterns of Behavior
Social Roles etc.
In a Project Spectrum classroom, the children are surrounded by rich and engaging materials that provide for the use of a range of intelligences. Materials are used that embody valued societal roles or end states, they draw on relevant combinations of intelligences. In the naturalist corner students examine and compare specimens to other materials. Sensory capacities and logical analytical powers are used here. In the story-telling area, students create imaginative tales using props and storyboards. In this area, they use their linguistic, dramatic, and imaginative facilities. In the building corner, students make models of their classrooms and "manipulate small-scale photographs of the students and teachers in the room". This area makes use of spatial, bodily, and personal intelligence. It is said that children need to observe competent adults or older peers at work or play in these areas.
With observation, children come to appreciate "the reasons for the materials as well as the nature of the skills that equip a master to interact with them in a meaningful way. (Gardner, 1993). Over a year, children have ample opportunity to explore the learning areas and for the most part, teachers can readily observe a child's interests and talents during the year. At the end of the year, the research team summarized the information obtained on each child in a brief essay called a Spectrum Report. The Spectrum Report describes each child's strengths and weaknesses and gives information about what might be done at home, in school, or in the community to build on the child's strengths and weaknesses.
The analysis presented is based on data collected during the 1986-87 and 1987-88 school years.
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